It must be confessed, however, that the certainty in question did little to enliven the gloom of that formidable evening. There was a noisy crowd about him in the room--noisy even with the accompaniment of the continual thunder-peals; lodgers and servants, chattering, shuffling, and bustling, and annoying him equally by making too light of the tempest and by vociferating their alarm. In the disorder, it was some time before a lamp was lighted, and the first thing he saw, as it was swung from the ceiling, was the white face of Mrs. Hudson, who was being carried out of the room in a swoon by two stout maid-servants, with Mary Garland forcing a passage. He rendered what help he could, but when they had laid the poor woman on her bed, Miss Garland motioned him away. “I think you make her worse,” she said. Rowland went to his own chamber. The partitions in Swiss mountain-inns are thin, and from time to time he heard Mrs. Hudson moaning, three rooms off. Considering its great fury, the storm took long to expend itself; it was upwards of three hours before the thunder ceased. But even then the rain continued to fall heavily, and the night, which had come on, was impenetrably black. This lasted till near midnight. Rowland thought of Mary Garland’s challenge in the porch, but he thought even more that, although the fetid interior of a high-nestling chalet may offer a convenient refuge from an Alpine tempest, there was no possible music in the universe so sweet as the sound of Roderick’s voice. At midnight, through his dripping window-pane, he saw a star, and he immediately went downstairs and out into the gallery. The rain had ceased, the cloud-masses were dissevered here and there, and several stars were visible. In a few minutes he heard a step behind him, and, turning, saw Miss Garland. He asked about Mrs. Hudson and learned that she was sleeping, exhausted by her fruitless lamentations. Miss Garland kept scanning the darkness, but she said nothing to cast doubt on Roderick’s having found a refuge. Rowland noticed it. “This also have I guaranteed!” he said to himself. There was something that Mary wished to learn, and a question presently revealed it. “What made him start on a long walk so suddenly?” she asked. “I saw him at eleven o’clock, and then he meant to go to Engelberg, and sleep.” “On his way to Interlaken?” Rowland said. “Yes,” she answered, under cover of the darkness. “We had some talk,” said Rowland, “and he seemed, for the day, to have given up Interlaken.” “Did you dissuade him?” “Not exactly. We discussed another question, which, for the time, superseded his plan.” Miss Garland was silent. Then--“May I ask whether your discussion was violent?” she said. “I am afraid it was agreeable to neither of us.” “And Roderick left you in--in irritation?” “I offered him my company on his walk. He declined it.”