He was taking time to think.

She hardly understood his doing this.
Surely, his mother must be very difficult and he a most considerate son.
She knew he loved her; perhaps never with a more controlling passion than at this moment of palpitating silence.
As she smiled, he caught her to his breast.
"We have yet a week," he cried, and left her hurriedly, precipitately.
* * * * * It was their last ride and they had gone far--too far, Ermentrude thought, for a day so chilly and a sky so threatening.

They had entered gorges; they had skirted mountain streams, had passed a village, left a ruined tower behind, and were still facing eastward, as if Lucerne had no further claims upon them and the world was all their own.
As the snows of the higher peaks burst upon their view, she made an attempt to stop this seeming flight.
"My uncle," she said.

"He will be counting the hours.

Let us go back." Then Carleton Roberts spoke.
"Another mile," he whispered, not because he feared being overheard by their driver, but because Love's note is instinctively low.