RODERICK HUDSON
making out a slight figure on the top of an eminence near the house, recognised the younger woman, urged forth by her anxiety and almost insanely exposed. He sprang out to join her, but in a moment he met her coming back. He seized her hand and hurried her to the house, where, as soon as she stepped into the covered gallery, Mrs. Hudson fell upon her with frantic lamentations.
"Did you see anything — nothing? Tell Mr. Mallet he must go and find him, with some men, some lights, some wraps, some wine. Go, go, go, sir! In mercy, go!"
Rowland, thus assaulted by the terrors of others, threw himself back with force on his own argument. He had offered it in all sincerity; nothing was more probable than that Roderick had found shelter in a herdsman's cabin. These were numerous on the neighbouring mountains, and the storm had given fair warning of its approach. Mary stood there at first without a word, only looking hard at him. He expected she would try to soothe her cousin. "Could you find him?" she suddenly asked. "Would it be of use?"
The question struck him as a flash intenser than when the jaws of the night opened to the whiteness of a thousand teeth. It shattered his dream that he weighed in the scale. But before he could answer the tempest was in possession and the rain, about them, like the sound of the deeps about a ship's sides. Every one fell back into the house. There had been no time to light lamps, and in the little uncarpeted parlour, in the unnatural darkness, Rowland felt
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