She shut her eyes and shuddered again. 'It was frightful!' he said, holding her fast. 'It was a great mercy, indeed. Thank heaven, it is over! You are not giddy now.'
'Oh, no; not at all!'
'And your wrist?'
'Oh, that's nothing. I only told you to show you what was the worst,' said Amy, smiling with recovered playfulness, the most re-assuring of all.
'What flower was it?'
'A piece of purple saxifrage. I thought there was no danger, for it did not seem steep at first.'
'No, it was not your fault. You had better not move just yet; sit still a little while.'
'O Guy, where are you going?'
'Only for your sketching tools and my stick. I shall not be gone an instant. Sit still and recover.'
In a few seconds he came back with her basket, and in it a few of the flowers.
'Oh, I am sorry,' she said, coming to meet him; 'I wish I had told you I did not care for them. Why did you?'
'I did not put myself in any peril about them. I had my trusty staff, you know.'
'I am glad I did not guess what you were doing. I thought it so impossible, that I did not think of begging you not. I shall keep them always. It is a good thing for us to be put in mind how frail all our joy is.'
'All?' asked Guy, scarcely as if replying to her, while, though his arm pressed hers, his eye was on the blue sky, as he answered himself, 'Your joy no man taketh from you.'
Amabel was much impressed, as she thought what it would have been for him if his little wife bad been snatched from him so suddenly and frightfully. His return--his meeting her mother--his desolate home and solitary life. She could almost have wept for him. Yet, at the moment of relief from the fear of such misery, he could thus speak. He could look onward to the joy beyond, even while his cheek was still blanched with the horror and anguish of the apprehension; and how great they had been was shown by the broken words he uttered in his sleep, for several nights afterwards, while by day he was always watching and cautioning her. Assuredly his dependence on the joy that could not be lost did not make her doubt his tenderness; it only made her feel how far behind him she was, for would it have been the same with her, had the danger been his?