Down with that dark thought which would still try to raise its unhallowed head! She turned to Harold with sparkling eyes and words of pleasure upon her lips.
"I should wish to be near and dear to both of you," said he, as he took her hand.

"I should wish Ida to be my sister, and you my wife." She said nothing.

She only stood looking at him with parted lips and great, dark, questioning eyes.

The lawn had vanished away, the sloping gardens, the brick villas, the darkening sky with half a pale moon beginning to show over the chimney-tops.

All was gone, and she was only conscious of a dark, earnest, pleading face, and of a voice, far away, disconnected from herself, the voice of a man telling a woman how he loved her.