It was now the end of April; and he proposed that the time should be fixed for the beginning of June.
When this favourable response arrived, Mrs Forbes gave Alec the letter to read, and saw the flush of delight that rose to his face as he gathered the welcome news.

Nor was this observation unpleasant to her; for that Alec should at length marry one of her own people was a grateful idea.
Alec sped away into the fields.

To think that all these old familiar places would one day be glorified by her presence! that the daisies would bend beneath the foot of the goddess! and the everlasting hills put on a veil of tenderness from the reflex radiance of her regard! A flush of summer mantled over the face of nature, the flush of a deeper summer than that of the year--of the joy that lies at the heart of all summers.

For a whole week of hail, sleet, and "watery sunbeams" followed, and yet in the eyes of Alec the face of nature still glowed.
When, after long expectation, the day arrived, Alec could not rest.

He wandered about all day, haunting his mother as she prepared his room for Kate, hurrying away with a sudden sense of the propriety of indifference, and hurrying back on some cunning pretext, while his mother smiled to herself at his eagerness and the transparency of his artifice.