The rain had ceased, the cloud-masses were dissevered here and there, and several stars were visible.  In a few minutes he heard a step behind him, and, turning, saw Miss Garland.  He asked about Mrs. Hudson and learned that she was sleeping, exhausted by her fruitless lamentations.  Miss Garland kept scanning the darkness, but she said nothing to cast doubt on Roderick’s having found a refuge.  Rowland noticed it.  “This also have I guaranteed!” he said to himself.  There was something that Mary wished to learn, and a question presently revealed it.

“What made him start on a long walk so suddenly?” she asked.  “I saw him at eleven o’clock, and then he meant to go to Engelberg, and sleep.”

“On his way to Interlaken?” Rowland said.

“Yes,” she answered, under cover of the darkness.

“We had some talk,” said Rowland, “and he seemed, for the day, to have given up Interlaken.”

“Did you dissuade him?”

“Not exactly.  We discussed another question, which, for the time, superseded his plan.”

Miss Garland was silent.  Then—­“May I ask whether your discussion was violent?” she said.

“I am afraid it was agreeable to neither of us.”

“And Roderick left you in—­in irritation?”

“I offered him my company on his walk.  He declined it.”

Miss Garland paced slowly to the end of the gallery and then came back.  “If he had gone to Engelberg,” she said, “he would have reached the hotel before the storm began.”

Rowland felt a sudden explosion of ferocity.  “Oh, if you like,” he cried, “he can start for Interlaken as soon as he comes back!”

But she did not even notice his wrath.  “Will he come back early?” she went on.

“We may suppose so.”

“He will know how anxious we are, and he will start with the first light!”

Rowland was on the point of declaring that Roderick’s readiness to throw himself into the feelings of others made this extremely probable; but he checked himself and said, simply, “I expect him at sunrise.”

Miss Garland bent her eyes once more upon the irresponsive darkness, and then, in silence, went into the house.  Rowland, it must be averred, in spite of his resolution not to be nervous, found no sleep that night.  When the early dawn began to tremble in the east, he came forth again into the open air.  The storm had completely purged the atmosphere, and the day gave promise of cloudless splendor.  Rowland watched the early sun-shafts slowly reaching higher, and remembered that if Roderick did not come back to breakfast, there were two things to be taken into account.  One was the heaviness of the soil on the mountain-sides, saturated with the rain; this would make him walk slowly:  the other was the fact that, speaking without irony, he was not remarkable for throwing himself into the sentiments of others.  Breakfast, at the inn, was early, and by breakfast-time Roderick had not appeared.