Wonderful to relate, she showed no curiosity and no surprise.

More wonderful still, at every fair opportunity that offered, she kept out of my way.
My next day's engagement being for seven o'clock in the evening, I put Mrs.Roylake's self-control to a new test.

With prefatory excuses, I informed her that I should not be able to dine at home as usual.
Impossible as it was that she could have been prepared to hear this, her presence of mind was equal to the occasion.

I left the house, followed by my stepmother's best wishes for a pleasant evening.
Hoping to speak with Cristel alone, I had arranged to reach the cottage before seven o'clock.
On the river-margin of the wood, I was confronted by a wild gleam of beauty in the familiar view, for which previous experience had not prepared me.

Am I wrong in believing that all scenery, no matter how magnificent or how homely it may be, derives a splendor not its own from favouring conditions of light and shade?
Our gloomy trees and our repellent river presented an aspect superbly transfigured, under the shadows of the towering clouds, the fantastic wreaths of the mist, and the lurid reddening of the sun as it stooped to its setting.