the Captain's heart nevertheless, for he had a kind one, to
see all the way how pale and quiet Daisy's face was. She asked him no
more about trilobites, she did not talk about anything; the subjects the
Captain started were soon let drop. And not because she was too ill to
talk, for Daisy's eye was thoughtfully clear and steady, and the Captain
had no doubt but she was busy enough in her own mind with things she did
not bring out. What sort of things? he was very curious to know. For he
had never seen Daisy's face so exceeding sweet in its expression as he
saw it now; though the cheeks were pale and worn, there was in her eye
whenever it was lifted to his a light of something hidden that the
Captain could not read. It was true. Daisy had sat stunned and dull all
the morning until he came with his proposal for the drive; and with the
first stir of excitement in getting ready, a returning tide of love had
filled the dry places in Daisy's heart; and it was full now of feelings
that only wanted a chance to come out. Meanwhile she sat as still as a
mouse and as grave as a judge.

The hill for which they were bound was some dozen or more miles away. It
was a wild rough place. Arrived at the foot of it, they could go no
further by the road; the Captain tied his horse to a tree, and he and
Daisy scrambled up the long winding ascent, thick with briars and
bushes, or strewn with pieces of rock and shaded with a forest of old
trees. This was hard walking for Daisy to-day; she did not feel like
struggling with any difficulties, and her poor little feet almost
refused to carry her through the roughnesses of the last part of the
way. She was very glad when they reached the ground where the Captain
wanted to explore, and she could sit down and be still. It was quite on
the other side of the mountain; a strange looking place. The face of the
hill was all bare of trees, and seemed to be nothing but rock; and
jagged and broken as if quarriers had been there cutting and blasting.
Nothing but a steep surface of broken rock; bare enough; but it was from
the sun, and Daisy chose the first smooth fragment to sit down upon.
Then what a beautiful place! For from that rocky seat, her eye had a
range over acres and acres of waving slopes of tree tops; down in the
valley at the mountain foot, and up and down so many slopes and ranges
of swelling and falling hillsides and dells, that the eye wandered from
one to another and another, softer and soft