"Dispirited!" exclaimed he; "I have never seen you so startlingly brilliant as to-night."
She shook her bright head mournfully. The hilarious voices from the merry groups within came full upon their ears.
"Walk with me a few moments in the cool quiet of the garden," said he; "here the air comes heavy and tainted from the crowded apartments within."
She placed her arm passively in his, and they passed down the steps and entered the shady paths.
"I marvel to find you so moody and glum," he remarked, after they had proceeded some distance in perfect silence, "when you have been so unusually gay through the evening."
"Let us return to the house," said he at length.
"What for?" she asked, turning her clear eyes quickly on his face.
"Because you do not enjoy your company," he answered.
"No, that is not the reason," said she; "'tis because you are weary of my presence."
"Weary of your presence!" repeated he. "Louise, you don't believe your own words. May I stay here at your side till I wish to go away?"
"Then let me put my arm around you," said he, encircling her waist, "and lay your dear head here, and you are mine henceforth, for I shall never leave you."
For a moment her tearful face was hidden on his bosom.
A low wailing wind swept through the shrubbery that surrounded them, and one single word, thrilling and awful, as if it fell from the lips of an accusing spirit, smote on their ears--'_Beware_!'
Louise started from the arm that encircled her and fled toward the lighted mansion. The party were still occupied in the merry dance, and no one seemed to have marked her brief absence.
------"Ye mountains, So varied and so terrible in beauty; Here in your rugged majesty of rocks And toppling trees that twine their roots with stone In perpendicular places, where the foot Of man would tremble could he reach them--yes, Ye look eternal!"
Cloud-capped, sky-crowned, mist-mantled, storm-defying Mount Washington! O, there have been days, and weeks, and months and years, when life's legion woes pressed heavily upon our souls and bowed our spirits in the dust; when we dared not glance toward the past, or contemplate the present, and turned with shuddering dread from the future of starless, impenetrable gloom; and in those doleful years, through long, long nights of sleepless pain and agony we have prayed, entreated, implored grim death to come and ease us of the thorny pangs that tore our bleeding hearts like venomed arrows. But now on reverent knee we thank the God of nature, that he has let us live to stand upon thy sky-piercing summit and look down on the world below! Wild Switzerland of America! thrice proud are we to call thy granite mountains ours, for beneath thy snow-capped summits our young existence dawned, and thy shrill winds and stormy blasts rolled forth the sleeping anthems that lulled our infant slumbers.