came to her asking--

"Will you join a party to the great ice palace, and see three acres of
snow in August, worn by a waterfall into a cathedral, as white if not as
durable as any marble?"

"I sit so comfortably here I think I had rather not. But you must go
because you like such wonders, and I shall rest till you come back."

"Then I shall take myself off and leave you to muse over the pleasures
of the day, which for a few hours has made you one of the most eminent
women this side the Rocky Mountains. There is a bugle at the house here
with which to make the echoes, I shall take it with me, and from time to
time send up a sweet reminder that you are not to stray away and lose
yourself."

Sylvia sat for half an hour, then wearied by the immensity of the wide
landscape she tried to rest her mind by examining the beauties close at
hand. Strolling down the path the sight-seers had taken, she found
herself in a rocky basin, scooped in the mountain side like a cup for a
little pool, so clear and bright it looked a diamond set in jet. A
fringe of scanty herbage had collected about its brim, russet mosses,
purple heath, and delicate white flowers, like a band of tiny hill
people keeping their revels by some fairy well. The spot attracted her,
and remembering that she was not to stray away, she sat down beside the
path to wait for her husband's return.

In the act of bending over the pool to sprinkle the thirsty little
company about it, her hand was arrested by the tramp of approaching
feet, and looking up to discover who was the disturber of her retreat,
she saw a man pausing at the top of the path opposite to that by which
she had come. He seemed scrutinizing the solitary occupant of the dell
before descending; but as she turned her face to him he flung away
knapsack, hat, and staff, and then with a great start she saw no
stranger, but Adam Warwick. Coming down to her so joyfully, so
impetuously, she had only time to recognise him, and cry out, when she
was swept up in an embrace as tender as irresistible, and lay there
conscious of nothing, but that happiness like some strong swift angel
had wrapt her away into the promised land so long believed in, hungered
for, and despaired of, as forever lost. Soon she heard his voice,
breathless, eager, but so fond it seemed another voice than his.

"My darling! did you think I should never come?"

"I thought you had forgotten me, I knew you were married. Adam, put me
down."