These symptoms of anxiety and alarm affected Edith's own spirits; they did more,--they shook her faith in the justice of her kinsman's conclusions.

His arguments in relation to the road were, indeed, unanswerable, and Telie had offered none to weaken them.

Yet why should she betray such distress, if they were upon the right one?
and why, in fact, should she not be supposed to know both the right and the wrong, since she had, as she said, so frequently travelled both?
These questions Edith could not refrain asking of Roland, who professed himself unable to answer them, unless by supposing the girl had become confused, as he thought was not improbable, or had, in reality, been so long absent from the forest as to have forgotten its paths altogether: which was likely enough, as she seemed a very simple-minded, inexperienced creature.

"But why need we," he said, "trouble ourselves to find reasons for the poor girl's opposition?
Here are the tracks of our friends, broader and deeper than ever: here they wind down into the hollow; and there, you may see where they have floundered through that vile pool, that is still turbid, where they crossed it.

A horrible quagmire! But courage, my fair cousin: it is only such difficulties as these which the road can lead us into." Such were the expressions with which the young soldier endeavoured to reassure his kinswoman's courage, his own confidence remaining still unmoved; although in secret he felt somewhat surprised at the coincidence between the girl's recommendations of the by-road and the injunctions of his morning dream.