ddenly there was a
spot of light on the sparkling floor, and Mary found herself beneath an
opening through the mountain crown, right up into the sky, which,
through the wild opening, looked of the deepest, most ultra-marine,
almost purple blue, utterly beyond conception in the glory of intense
colour, bringing only to her mind those most expressive, yet most
inexpressive words, 'the body of heaven in His clearness.' She felt,
what she had often heard said, that to all mountain tops is given
somewhat of the glory that dwelt on Sinai. That ineffable blue was
more dazzling than even the fields beyond fields of marvellous white
that met her eye on emerging from the dark gallery.

'I never wish so much that Lord Fitzjocelyn should see anything as
that,' said Tom Madison, when Mary, in her gratitude, was trying to say
something adequate to the trouble she had given, though the beauty was
beyond any word of admiration.

'He would--' she began to answer, but the rest died away, only answered
by Tom with an emphatic 'He _would_!' and then began the difficulties
of getting down.

But Mary had the pleasure at the next pause of hearing Mr. Ward say,
'That is a very fine intelligent young fellow, worthy of his library. I
think your father has a prize in him!'

Mary's eyes thanked Mr. Ward, with all her heart in them. It was worth
going up the Andes for such a sentence to put into a letter that Aunt
Kitty would show to Louis.

Robson seemed anxious to monopolize the attention of the gentlemen, to
the exclusion of Madison; and while Tom was thus thrust aside, Mary
succeeded in having a conversation with him, such as she felt was a
sort of duty to Louis. She asked him the names of the various
mountain-peaks in sight, whose bare crags, too steep to support the
snow, here and there stood out dark in salient contrast to the white
scenery, and as he gave them to her, mentioning the few facts that he
had been able to gather respecting them, she was able to ask him
whether he was in the habit of seeing anything approaching to society.
He smiled, saying that his nearest neighbours were many miles off--an
engineer conducting some far more extensive mining operations, whom he
sometimes met on business, and an old Spanish gentleman, who lived in a
valley far down the mountain side, with whom he sometimes smoked his
cigar on a Sunday, if he felt inclined for a perpendicular promenade on
a Peruvian causeway for nearly four miles. Mary a