notes of a horn, blown below, had just gone down the diminishing echoes
from cliff to cliff, and died into a listening silence, away over, one
could not tell where, beyond the mysterious ramparts.

"It's getting cold," said Jeannie impatiently. "I think we've stayed
here long enough. Augusta, _don't_ you mean to get a proper shawl, and
put some sort of lace thing on your head, and come in with us for a
look, at least, at the hop? Come, Nell; come, Leslie; you might as well
be at home as in a place like this, if you're only going to mope."

"It seems to me," said Leslie, more to herself than to Jeannie, looking
over upon the curves and ridges and ravines of Mount Washington, showing
vast and solemn under the climbing moon, "as if we had got into a
cathedral!"

"And the 'great nerve' was being touched! Well,--that don't make _me_
shiver. Besides, I didn't come here to shiver. I've come to have a right
good time; and to look at the mountains--as much as is reasonable."

It was a pretty good definition of what Jeannie Hadden thought she had
come into the world for. There was subtle indication in it, also, that
the shadow of some doubt had not failed to touch her either, and that
this with her was less a careless instinct than a resolved conclusion.

Elinor, in her happy good-humor, was ready for either thing: to stay in
the night splendor longer, or to go in. It ended in their going in.
Outside, the moon wheeled on in her long southerly circuit, the stars
trembled in their infinite depths, and the mountains abided in awful
might. Within was a piano tinkle of gay music, and demi-toilette, and
demi-festival,--the poor, abridged reproduction of city revelry in the