"You do yourself injustice. It was your love of all this beauty that
induced you to invite me to this walk. Without you I should have
missed it, nor known what I had lost."

William Bernard sighed. She has not, he thought, the least suspicion
that I love her. She does not know, and would not care if she did,
that, by her side, the only prospect I behold is herself, and the
invitation to this stroll but a pretext to approach her.

"Your presence, dear Faith," said he, "imparts a double charm to the
scenery."

"It is sweet," she answered, leaning, as it seemed to him, at the
moment, more affectionately on his arm, "to have one to whom we can
say, how lovely is all this loveliness."

"The sentiment of the Poet never seemed so true before," said Bernard,
looking at her with admiration.

She made no reply, for her whole soul was absorbed by the view before
her.

They had arrived at the platform, which, somewhat higher than the
Fall, commands a prospect of the river and surrounding country. Below
them foamed and thundered the torrent, which, first, making a leap
some twenty feet down, over large, irregularly-shaped boulders of
granite, that strove to oppose its passage, rushed in a steep descent
over a bed of solid stone, irregularly worn by the action of the
water; and, then, contracting itself between its adamantine walls,