Rowland was extremely perturbed by the poor lady’s vociferous folly, for he deemed her anxiety superfluous.  He had offered his suggestion with sincerity; nothing was more probable than that Roderick had found shelter in a herdsman’s cabin.  These were numerous on the neighboring mountains, and the storm had given fair warning of its approach.  Miss Garland stood there very pale, saying nothing, but looking at him.  He expected that she would check her cousin’s importunity.  “Could you find him?” she suddenly asked.  “Would it be of use?”

The question seemed to him a flash intenser than the lightning that was raking the sky before them.  It shattered his dream that he weighed in the scale!  But before he could answer, the full fury of the storm was upon them; the rain descended in sounding torrents.  Every one fell back into the house.  There had been no time to light lamps, and in the little uncarpeted parlor, in the unnatural darkness, Rowland felt Mary’s hand upon his arm.  For a moment it had an eloquent pressure; it seemed to retract her senseless challenge, and to say that she believed, for Roderick, what he believed.  But nevertheless, thought Rowland, the cry had come, her heart had spoken; her first impulse had been to sacrifice him.  He had been uncertain before; here, at least, was the comfort of certainty!

It must be confessed, however, that the certainty in question did little to enliven the gloom of that formidable evening.  There was a noisy crowd about him in the room—­noisy even with the accompaniment of the continual thunder-peals; lodgers and servants, chattering, shuffling, and bustling, and annoying him equally by making too light of the tempest and by vociferating their alarm.  In the disorder, it was some time before a lamp was lighted, and the first thing he saw, as it was swung from the ceiling, was the white face of Mrs. Hudson, who was being carried out of the room in a swoon by two stout maid-servants, with Mary Garland forcing a passage.  He rendered what help he could, but when they had laid the poor woman on her bed, Miss Garland motioned him away.

“I think you make her worse,” she said.

Rowland went to his own chamber.  The partitions in Swiss mountain-inns are thin, and from time to time he heard Mrs. Hudson moaning, three rooms off.  Considering its great fury, the storm took long to expend itself; it was upwards of three hours before the thunder ceased.  But even then the rain continued to fall heavily, and the night, which had come on, was impenetrably black.  This lasted till near midnight.  Rowland thought of Mary Garland’s challenge in the porch, but he thought even more that, although the fetid interior of a high-nestling chalet may offer a convenient refuge from an Alpine tempest, there was no possible music in the universe so sweet as the sound of Roderick’s voice.  At midnight, through his dripping window-pane, he saw a star, and he immediately went downstairs and out into the gallery.