Much of her apparel had slipped away from her in the fervors of revivalist anecdote, and while she hunted for gloves and reticule--officiously helped by the younger girls--Robert crossed over to Catherine.
'You lifted us on to your own high places!' he said, bending down to her; 'I shall carry your story with me through the fells.' She looked up, and as she met his warm, moved look a little glow and tremor crept into the face, destroying its exalted expression.

He broke the spell; she sank from the poet into the embarrassed woman.
'You must see my old man,' she said, with an effort; 'he is worth a library of sermons.

I must introduce him to you.' He could think of nothing else to say just then, but could only stand impatiently wishing for Mrs.Fleming's disappearance, that he might somehow appropriate her eldest niece.

But alas! when she went, Catherine went out with her, and reappeared no more, though he waited some time.
He walked home in a whirl of feeling; on the way he stopped, and leaning over a gate which led into one of the river-fields, gave himself up to the mounting tumult within.

Gradually, from the half-articulate chaos of hope and memory, there emerged the deliberate voice of his inmost manhood.
'In her and her only is my heart's desire! She and she only if she will, and God will, shall be my wife!' He lifted his head and looked out on the dewy field, the evening beauty of the hills, with a sense of immeasurable change:-- Tears Were in his eyes, and in his ears The murmur of a thousand years.
He felt himself knit to his kind, to his race, as he had never felt before.