Colonel Drayton: well, a man with the gout is not the confidant for a lover.

He was beginning to look depressed again, when the light came.

Henry Dale! No one could be better.
Mr.Denner awaited the evening with impatience.

He would walk home with the Dales, he thought, and then he and Henry could talk it all over, down in the study.
He was glad when the cool spring night began to close, full of that indefinable fragrance of fresh earth and growing things, and before it was time to start he cheered himself by a little music.

He went into the dreary, unused parlor, and pulling up the green Venetian blinds, which rattled like castanets, he pushed back the ivy-fastened shutters, and sat down by the open window; then, with his chin resting upon his fiddle, and one foot in its drab gaiter swinging across his knee, he played mournfully and shrilly in the twilight, until it was time to start.
He saw the Misses Woodhouse trotting toward the rectory, with Sarah walking in a stately way behind them, swinging her unlighted lantern, and cautioning them not to step in the mud.