There the general excused himself, and North and Elizabeth were left alone.

She seated herself before the open fire of blazing hickory logs, whose light, and that of the shaded lamps, filled the long room with a soft radiance.

She had never seemed so desirable to North as now when he was about to leave her.

He stood silent, leaning against the corner of the chimneypiece, looking down on all her springlike radiance.

Usually he was neither preoccupied nor silent, but to-night he was both.