During their passage of the Saint Gothard, Roderick absented himself much of the time from the carriage, and rambled far in advance, along the huge zigzags of the road.  He displayed an extraordinary activity; his light weight and slender figure made him an excellent pedestrian, and his friends frequently saw him skirting the edge of plunging chasms, loosening the stones on long, steep slopes, or lifting himself against the sky, from the top of rocky pinnacles.  Mary Garland walked a great deal, but she remained near the carriage to be with Mrs. Hudson.  Rowland remained near it to be with Miss Garland.  He trudged by her side up that magnificent ascent from Italy, and found himself regretting that the Alps were so low, and that their trudging was not to last a week.  She was exhilarated; she liked to walk; in the way of mountains, until within the last few weeks, she had seen nothing greater than Mount Holyoke, and she found that the Alps amply justified their reputation.  Rowland knew that she loved nature, but he was struck afresh with the vivacity of her observation of it, and with her knowledge of plants and stones.  At that season the wild flowers had mostly departed, but a few of them lingered, and Miss Garland never failed to espy them in their outlying corners.  They interested her greatly; she was charmed when they were old friends, and charmed even more when they were new.  She displayed a very light foot in going in quest of them, and had soon covered the front seat of the carriage with a tangle of strange vegetation.  Rowland of course was alert in her service, and he gathered for her several botanical specimens which at first seemed inaccessible.  One of these, indeed, had at first appeared easier of capture than his attempt attested, and he had paused a moment at the base of the little peak on which it grew, measuring the risk of farther pursuit.  Suddenly, as he stood there, he remembered Roderick’s defiance of danger and of Miss Light, at the Coliseum, and he was seized with a strong desire to test the courage of his companion.  She had just scrambled up a grassy slope near him, and had seen that the flower was out of reach.  As he prepared to approach it, she called to him eagerly to stop; the thing was impossible!  Poor Rowland, whose passion had been terribly starved, enjoyed immensely the thought of having her care, for three minutes, what became of him.  He was the least brutal of men, but for a moment he was perfectly indifferent to her suffering.

“I can get the flower,” he called to her.  “Will you trust me?”

“I don’t want it; I would rather not have it!” she cried.

“Will you trust me?” he repeated, looking at her.