A dark velvety Cramoisie rose nestled against her full throat.

Malcolm remembered suddenly that he had noticed that special rose in the garden of the White Cottage when he last dined at the vicarage; he wondered with a sudden fierce prick of jealousy if that fellow Carlyon knew it was her birthday, and had brought it to her.

At the idea there was a dangerous throbbing of his pulses.
The previous evening he had strolled across to the Wood House in the hope that Elizabeth would be in one of her gracious moods, and then he could coax her to sing to him.

But to his disappointment his visit had seemed less welcome than usual; and though Dinah received him with her wonted gentle courtesy, he had a vague suspicion that something was amiss.

Dinah looked as though she had been shedding tears, and Elizabeth's face was flushed, and she was very silent; if he had not known them so well, and their intense love for each other, he would almost have suspected that there had been a warm altercation between them, but this was manifestly impossible.
No, they had never quarrelled even in their childish days, he remembered Elizabeth had once told him that, and assuredly they never quarrelled now.