After nightfall, too, he invariably returned thither, with a faint hope fluttering at his heart that the lamp might again be shining on the summit of the tower, and would dispel this ugly mystery out of the circle consecrated by its rays.

There being no point of which he could take firm hold, his mind was filled with unsubstantial hopes and fears.

Once Kenyon had seemed to cut his life in marble; now he vaguely clutched at it, and found it vapor.
In his unstrung and despondent mood, one trifling circumstance affected him with an idle pang.

The doves had at first been faithful to their lost mistress.

They failed not to sit in a row upon her window-sill, or to alight on the shrine, or the church-angels, and on the roofs and portals of the neighboring houses, in evident expectation of her reappearance.