“ And so the heat slipped down with the sun to other horizons, coolness crept in upon the running river's breast with the dusk, dew gathered and lay darkly glittering on rail and spar and shroud as star by star stole out to sparkle in it; and Andrew raised his eyes at length, and they rested long and unwaveringly on the little figure sitting not far away with hands crossed about the knees and eyes looking out into the last light--the tranquil, happy face from which a white handkerchief kept back the flying hair while giving it the likeness of a nun's. Was it a dream? Was it Louie? ”

“ Often, when she forgot what she was doing, Louie made surmises concerning Frarnie Maurice, wondering if she were the noble thing that Andrew needed to ennoble him--if she were really so strong and beautiful that the mere sight of her had killed all thought or memory of an older love; trying to believe her all that his guardian angel might wish his wife to be, and to acknowledge that she herself was so low and small and ignorant that she could only have injured him--to be convinced that it was neither weakness, nor covetousness, nor perjury in Andrew, having met the sun, to forget the shadows ”

“ Do you know, little bride, I think all my vanity is going to take the form of having you more prettily dressed than your cousins, mine ancient flames when I was a bad boy?"
"Oh, Ross," with a little laugh, "you can't do it: you can't make a rival specimen out of your bad bargain. Nothing will make me a beauty."
"Don't, Percy! I do like beauty. I have run after and made a fool of myself for years over pretty women, but I like your face, just as it is, better than any other woman's face I ever knew. ”

“ I almost give up my life, my cousin, when I make my heritage of woe known to you. You will pity me, Sheldon, when you realize what agony the confession you thus wring from me gives my heart. But if it cures your passion it is not borne in vain. I love with an undying love, a faith that knows no change, an endurance that years of neglect have not weakened, that years of cruelty could never change, a man who would laugh to scorn my very name. I love--and have loved since I was sixteen years old, until now--Ross Norval. Keep my secret.
"PERCY HASTINGS." ”

“ Of course this Arcadian life could not continue in the very heart of Sodom. Society was not going to lose Ross Norval if he had made a fool of himself and married a little nobody. So callers flowed in upon them, and Ross, having in boyish glee arrayed himself in purple and fine linen, took her in state to see his friends.
Of course her cousins and their friends hated her: she had won their bonne louche, and the crimson of her plainness and poverty, of the having to "have Percy always around to please Uncle Rufus," was pink to the enormity of her being Ross Norval's wife. ”

“ And in Louie's heart there was something just as strange and still as in all other things throughout that wearing, blinding day; but with her the calm was not of fear, only of unspeakable joy; for if Andrew lived it was she that had saved him, and though he died, his delirium had told her that his heart was hers. "If he dies, he is mine!" she cried triumphantly, forgetting all the long struggle of scruple and doubt, "and if he lives, he shall never be hers!" ”

“ We have our life before us."
"Only just help me live it, Louie."
"God will help us," she answered. And as she spoke a sudden rainbow leaped into the western heaven as if to seal her promise, and as it slowly faded there came a wild salt smell, an air that tingled like a tonic through the veins: the east wind was singing in from sea, bringing the music of breaker and shore, and the fever was blasted by its breath throughout the little Sabrina. ”

“ If ever a woman was born into this world an old maid, it was Sophonisba T----. Her fine name was the only romantic thing about her. She had had more than one offer of marriage in her day, but she had no talent for matrimony, and had turned such a very cold shoulder on her admirers that the swains became dispirited, and betook themselves to the courtship of more impressible damsels. There was no hidden romance or tale of unreturned affection in Miss Sophonisba's experience. The simple fact was, she had never wished to be married. Miss Faithful was five years her sister's junior. ”

“ I have you, dear old Ross."
"Oh, Percy, I do care. God knows even the thought of it gives me a bitter agony, I know you cannot trust me yet, because I married you so carelessly, and because you think I can't be true to one woman with my battered old heart. But that's because you judge me by what my long, unloved life has made me. No good woman ever made me love her before. I never knew how beautiful a pure life was, my darling, until I knew it through watching yours. ”

“ DEAR DOCTOR: You have so often wanted to know your 'nebulous child,' and been indignant that she hid her face from you behind her veil of clouds, you will be pleased to know that the sunshine has dispelled the clouds, and made her at last able to meet the starry train of which you are the sun. Will you greet Ross Norval's bride at the Wilber party to-night as the child you have trained and been so good to in the past, and who, ever honoring you, is still your loving child for the future? ”

“ We will follow her. She is ominously sad during the lonely journey: she is almost stern by the time she arrives in New York. In place of the summer's sweetness and gayety, there is a wintry and almost icy expression in her face, as if she were about to encounter trials to which she had been long accustomed, and which she had learned to bear with hardness if not with resentment.
No one meets her at the railway station, no one at the door of the sombre house where her carriage stops--no one until she has passed up stairs into a darkling parlor. ”

“ At the house of a poor and bed-ridden widow she met, as she had hoped to meet, her husband. When they left the place he took her into his gig and carried her home.
It was a delicious day of mid June: the sun was setting in clouds of crimson and gold; the earth was in its freshest summer glory. In the beauty of the scene, and in the companionship of the heart which was all hers, she forgot, or seemed to forget, her troubles. One hand rested on Leighton's arm; her face was lifted steadily to his, like a flower to the light; her violet eyes were dewy and sparkling with happiness. ”

“ If he loved his wife "somewhat better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse," "Why what more," said Mrs. Moore, "could any woman ask of a man given to horses and hunting? If Calvin Bruce ever cares more for a woman than he does for his brown pointer and his fast trotter, she may think herself happy indeed."
At that instant a sudden and furious blast rushed out of the woods, and tore and shook at the four corners of the house as if to wrench it from its foundations.
"It's quite awful to hear the wind scream like that," said Minny. "It is like the banshee. ”

“ Here is Alice Duvernois: she is a woman of good position, of intellectual quickness, of unusual sensitiveness of spirit; yet she has thought out this woeful question differently from the great majority of her sex. To her, thirsty for sympathy and love, bound to a man who gives her neither, grown feverish and delirious with the torment of an empty heart, it has seemed that the sanctity of a second marriage will somehow cover the violation of a first. ”

“ Poor Tom! he is so shockingly unselfish himself that he would rather enjoy a sacrifice than otherwise, I suppose." So ran my thoughts, and I grew desperate. Desperation awakens courage. Tom would be there in the evening, and if anything could be done it had to be done at once.
I slipped out silently as I came: no one heard me. I did not mean that they should do so, for, to confess the truth, I was listening on purpose. I dressed to go out with Mr. Pepper; so did Bessie, though I must say she was very nervous and uncertain about it. ”

“ Miss Faithful was much engaged with her sewing just at that moment, and her sister's unusual agitation escaped her notice. Presently she said, "Sophonisba, isn't there a bit of old black ribbon in that cupboard? I want something of the kind, just to put round inside the neck of the dress, and then it will be done."
"Yes--I don't know--I think not," said her sister, with a hesitation so unlike her usual promptness that Miss Faithful looked up surprised. "I mean, I think there is," said Miss Sophonisba. "If you'd like to look, I'll hold the candle for you." ”

“ Now, old Jess was as brave an old fellow as ever sailed a ship, but he did not fancy ghosts, and the knowledge that all hands were looking at him to see how he took it made him feel a little nervous; but with a firm voice he called for his night-glass, and when the quartermaster, with a touch of his hat, handed it to him, he quietly arranged the focus, and, as we all supposed, was about to point it at Sadler, who was still dancing away for dear life all to himself. ”

“ The last that he remembered had been a hot, dry, aching agony, and this was bliss: the sleep into which he fell when waking from the stupor that had benumbed his power of suffering--a power that had rioted till no more could be suffered--lasted during all the spell of that fervid noon sun that hung above the harbor and the town like the unbroken seal of the expected pestilence. A strange still town, fear and heat keeping its streets deserted, its people longing for an east wind that should kill the fever, yet dreading lest it should blow the fever in on them ”

“ Walton Rutherford, the giver of the entertainment in question, was a member of a class unhappily now fast dying out of New York society--one of those ladies of high social position and ancient lineage who adorn the station which they occupy as much by their virtues as by their social talents. A high-minded, pure-souled matron, a devoted wife and mother, as well as a queen of society, inheriting the noble qualities of her Revolutionary forefathers as well as their great estates--such was the lady who presided over the brilliant festivity we are about to describe. ”

“ Stranger as she was in Northport, everybody trusted the frank sweetness in her face, and sought no other cause for admiring her and wishing her happiness. The whole village came to the church to witness her marriage and to doat upon a bridal beauty which lay far more in expression than in form or feature. A few words of description--inadequate notes to represent the precious gold of reality--must be given to one who could change the stare of curiosity to a beaming glance of sympathy. ”

“ It is not in my nature to remain satisfied with a life of poverty and respectability, and I will not return to one of degradation and vice. But, after all, what does it matter? My fate would have found me sooner or later, and this soft couch is better than a hospital bed or the slabs of La Morgue: this draught is more soothing than the cold waters of the Thames or the Seine. Life is no longer a game that is worth the candle: let us extinguish the lights and put the cards away."
She took up the phial of morphia, drew the little sofa nearer to the fireplace and extended herself upon it. ”

“ It was a brilliant picture to him, doubtless, but in some way the recollection of two barelegged little children digging clams down on the flats when the tide was out, with the great white lighthouse watching them across the deserted stretches of the long bent eel-grass, rose suddenly and wiped the other picture out, and he saw the wind blowing in Louie's brown and silken hair and kissing the color on her cheeks; he saw the shy sparkle of her downcast eyes, lovely and brown then as they were now ”

“ At that moment the cat rushed up the short staircase from the lower room, and springing on the bed, stood with bristling tail and glaring eyes, intently watching the door.
"Has she got a fit?" exclaimed Miss Sophonisba; and she put out her hand to push the cat off, but it turned to Miss Faithful, who was sitting up in bed, and crawling under the bed-clothes, lay there trembling and mewing in a very curious fashion.
"Some one has got in down stairs," said Miss Faithful, turning white. "Oh, Sophonisba, we shall all be murdered!" ”

“ I am pleased that my society has not proved repugnant to you; for since it has been no annoyance in its first trial, I think we can manage that it shall not be so in the future. I would ask, as an especial piece of mercy to "your handmaiden," that you will grant her some favors at the outset of our somewhat tangled fate. Please let me be your sister. It is for your well-being the world should know me as your wife, and, the Lord helping me, I will be a willing, faithful helpmeet to you, caring most for your comfort and happiness, spending and being spent in your service ”