The very leaves by the roadside were fragrant as flowers.
For the moment it sufficed to know that she was loved, and that she loved.

She was no fool.

At the back of all her wonder lay the certainty that in the world's eyes such love as hers was absurd; that it must end where it began; that Raoul could never be hers, nor she escape from a captivity as real as his.

But, perhaps because she knew all this so certainly, she could put it aside.

This thing had come to her: this happiness to which, alone, in darkness, depressed by every look into the mirror, by every casual proof that her brothers and intimates accepted the verdict as final, her soul had been loyal--a forgotten servant of a neglectful lord.