“I do not, I am ashamed to say,” replied the Major.
“Why, you were there a whole summer. Ah! I suppose you thought about nothing but your salmon fishing. If Elsley had been there he would not have forgotten a rock or a pool. Would you, Elsley?”
“Really, in spite of all salmon, I have not forgotten a rock or a pool about the place which I ever saw: but at the waterfall I never was.”
“So he has not forgotten? What cause had he to remember so carefully?” thought Elsley.
“Oh, Elsley, look! What is that exquisite flower, like a ball of gold, hanging just over the water?”
If Elsley had not had the evil spirit haunting about him, he would have joined in Lucia’s admiration of the beautiful creature, as it dropped into the foam from its narrow ledge, with its fan of palmate leaves bright green against the black mosses of the rock, and its golden petals glowing like a tiny sun in the darkness of the chasm: as it was, he answered—
“Only a buttercup.”
“I am sure it’s not a buttercup! It is three times as large, and a so much paler yellow! Is it a buttercup, now, Major Campbell?”
Campbell looked down.
“Very nearly one, after all: but its real name is the globe flower. It is common enough here in spring; you may see the leaves in every pasture. But I suppose this plant, hidden from the light, has kept its flowers till the autumn.”
“And till I came to see it, darling that it is! I should like to reward it by wearing it home.”
“I daresay it would be very proud of the honour; especially if Mr. Vavasour would embalm it in verse, after it had done service to you.”
“It is doing good enough service where it is,” said Elsley. “Why pluck out the very eye of that perfect picture?”
“Strange,” said Lucia, “that such, a beautiful thing should be born there all alone upon these rocks, with no one to look at it.”
“It enjoys itself sufficiently without us, no doubt,” said Elsley.
“Yes; but I want to enjoy it. Oh, if you could but get it for me?”
Elsley looked down. There were fifteen feet of somewhat slippery rock; then a ragged ledge a foot broad, in a crack of which the flower grew; then the dark boiling pool. Elsley shrugged his shoulders, and said, smiling, as if it were a fine thing to say—“Really, my dear, all men are not knight errants enough to endanger their necks for a bit of weed; and I cannot say that such rough tours de force are at all to my fancy.”
Lucia turned away: but she was vexed. Campbell could see that a strange fancy for the plant had seized her. As she walked from the spot, he could hear her talking about its beauty to Valencia.
Campbell’s blood boiled. To be asked by that woman—by any woman—to get her that flower: and to be afraid! It was bad enough to be ill-tempered; but to be a coward, and to be proud thereof! He yielded to a temptation, which he had much better have left alone, seeing that Lucia had not asked him; swung himself easily enough down the ledge; got the flower, and put it, quietly bowing, into Mrs. Vavasour’s hand.