Their thoughts were full of the
coming separation, and it gave a deep interest to these last services;
for the Homes, unwilling to leave their mother and Frank so long alone
at Ildown, were to start for England on the following day, and the
Kennedys intended to visit Chamounix for two weeks more.

On the Sunday evening they strolled down to the glacier to look once
again, for the last time, into its crevices, and wonder at its fairy
caverns, fringed with icicles, like rows of silver daggers, and ceiled
with translucent sapphire, beneath whose blue fretwork the stray
sunbeams lost their way amid ice-blocks of luminous green, and pillars
of lapis-lazuli and crystal. They sat on a huge boulder of granite,
which some avalanche had torn down, and tumbled from the mountain's
side, and there enjoyed the icy wind which tempered the warm evening
air, as it swept over the leaping waves of the glacier stream.

"What a mixture of terror and beauty these monstrous glaciers are," said
Julian; "crawling down the valleys, and shearing away the solid rocks
before them like gigantic ploughshares."

"Yes," said Eva. "When you look up at the tumbled pinnacles of those
seracs, does it not seem as if Summer had rent in anger with some great
ice-axe the huge enemy whom she could not quite destroy?"

"And see," said Mr Kennedy, "how Nature gets out of these terrible
heaps of shattered ice both use and beauty; and since she must leave
them as the eternal fountains of her rivers, see how she tinges them
with her loveliest blue."

They talked on until it was time to return, but Violet and Kennedy still
lingered, sitting on the vast boulder, under pretence of seeing the
sunset.

"Well, don't get lost again, that's all," said Cyril sagely.

"Oh no, we shall be back very soon," answered Violet, but she felt
instinctively that the "very soon" in time might measure an eternity of
emotion.

Need we say that Kennedy and Violet had, since that night of wild
adventure, loved each other, hour by hour, with deeper affection? He
was young, and brave, and light-hearted, and of a pleasant countenance;
and she was a young, and confiding, and graceful, and lovely girl, and
they were drawn to one another with a love which absorbed all other
thoughts, and overpowered all other considerations; and it was
unspeakable happiness for each to know how lovely were all their acts,
and how dear were all their words in the other's eyes. And now that the
time