For a moment--only for a moment--she thought she would return, and strive to atone for the falsehood, by giving up the object of her evening wandering.

But a bright gleam of sunshine darted through the trees--the stream foamed and leapt towards it--the waterfall sparkled beneath--the arrowy fern glittered like gold, and Netta's heart forgot her duty, and thought of her recreant lover.
Her repentance must come in gloom, her sin in sunshine.
She plucked a bunch of the wild roses that hung around and above her, and dashed them petulantly into the stream.

She watched them as their course was interrupted by the large masses of rock, and they were tossed here and there by the angry mischievous water.

At last they hung trembling on a huge stone, stranded, as it were, on their impetuous course.

Again, for a moment, a serious comparison arose in her mind, and she wondered whether her life might be like that of the flowers she had cast away from her?
whether she might be carried, by the force of contending passions, and left to wither upon some hard shore that as yet she knew not of.