As she smiled, he caught her to his breast.

“We have yet a week,” he cried, and left her hurriedly, precipitately.

* * * * *

It was their last ride and they had gone far—­too far, Ermentrude thought, for a day so chilly and a sky so threatening.  They had entered gorges; they had skirted mountain streams, had passed a village, left a ruined tower behind, and were still facing eastward, as if Lucerne had no further claims upon them and the world was all their own.

As the snows of the higher peaks burst upon their view, she made an attempt to stop this seeming flight.

“My uncle,” she said.  “He will be counting the hours.  Let us go back.”

Then Carleton Roberts spoke.

“Another mile,” he whispered, not because he feared being overheard by their driver, but because Love’s note is instinctively low.  “You are cold; we shall find there a fire, and dinner—­and—­Listen, Ermentrude,—­a minister ready to unite us.  We are going back, man and wife.”

“Carleton!”

“Yes, dear, it is quite understood.  Letters are urging my return to New York.  Your uncle is holding you here.  I cannot face an uncertain separation.  I must feel that you are mine beyond all peradventure—­must be able to think of you as my wife, and that will hold us both and make it proper for you to come to me if I cannot come to you, the moment you are free to go where you will.”

“But why this long ride, this far-away spot?  Why couldn’t a minister be found in Lucerne?  Is our marriage to be as secret as our engagement?  Is that what you wish, Carleton?”

“Yes, dear; for a little while, just for a little while, till I have seen my mother, and rid our way of every obstacle to complete happiness.  It will be better.  When one has promised to love forever, what are a few weeks or months.  Make me happy, dear.  You have it in your power to do so.  Happy!  When once I can whisper ‘wife,’ the world will not hold a happier man than I.”

Did she yield because of her own great longing?  No, it was by that phrase he caught her:  The world will not hold a happier man than I.

* * * * *

Mountains!  Icy peaks, with sides heavy with snow!  And so near!  Almost they seemed to meet across the narrow valley.  She gave them one quick glance, then her eyes and her heart became absorbed in what she could see of this Alpine village, holding up its head in the eternal snows like an edelweiss on the edge of a glacier.

It was to be the scene of her one great act in life; the spot she was entering as a maiden and would leave as a wife.  What other spot would ever be so interesting!  To note its every detail of house and church would not take long—­it was such a little village, and the streets were so few; and the people—­why she could count them.

Afterward, she found that the exact number and the difference in color of the short line of timbered houses stretching between them and the church were imprinted on her brain; but she did not know it at the time for her attention was mainly fixed upon the people when once she had seen them, for there was a strangeness in their looks and actions she did not understand, all the more that it seemed to have nothing to do either with Carleton or herself.