Here the party paused for many minutes before venturing out upon the wide expanse of frozen river, evidently making sure that the way was clear.

Rosalie, her senses quite fully restored by this time, began to analyse the situation with a clearness and calmness that afterward was the object of considerable surprise to her.

Instead of being hysterical with fear, she was actually experiencing the thrill of a real emotion.

She had no doubt but that her abductors were persons hired by those connected with her early history, and, strange as it may seem, she could not believe that bodily harm was to be her fate after all these years of secret attention on the part of those so deeply, though remotely, interested.
Somehow there raced through her brain the exhilarating conviction that at last the mystery of her origin was to be cleared away, and with it all that had been as a closed book.

No thought of death entered her mind at that time.