He may have left her love-cold, but he touched the sympathy which in a true woman is love's nearest neighbour.

Before she knew herself she had promised, and had been kissed respectfully and tenderly by her delighted lover.

For a moment she felt something like joy, and then, with a dreadful thought of the baselessness of her pleasure, walked slowly homewards by his side.
The next morning Alice rose with a dreary sense of the irrevocable.

A door seemed to have closed behind her, and the future stretched before her in a straight dusty path with few nooks and shadows.

This was not the blithe morning of betrothal she had looked for.