ack to her through the quivering moonlight.

And now night has fallen at last upon this long day. A gentle wind is
shivering through the elms; a glorious moon has risen in all its beauty,
and stands in "heaven's wide, pathless way," as though conscious of its
grandeur, yet sad for the sorrows of the seething earth beneath. Now
clear, now resplendent she shines, and now through a tremulous mist
shows her pure face, and again for a space is hidden,

"As if her head she bow'd
Stooping through a fleecy cloud."

Miss Priscilla, with a sense of now-found dignity upon her, has gone
early to bed. Miss Penelope has followed suit. Terence, in the privacy
of his own room, is rubbing a dirty oily flannel on the bright barrels
of his beloved gun, long since made over to him as a gift by Brian.

Kit is sitting on the wide, old-fashioned window-seat in Monica's room
at her sister's feet, and with her thin little arms twined lovingly
round her. She is sleepy enough, poor child, but cannot bear to desert
Monica, who is strangely wakeful and rather silent and _distraite_. For
ever since the morning when he had come to carry Miss Priscilla to
Coole, Brian has been absent from her; not once has he come to her; and
a sense of chill and fear, as strong as it is foolish, is overpowering
her.

She rouses herself now with a little nervous quiver that seems to run
through all her veins and lets her hand fall on Kit's drooping head.

"It grows very late. Go to bed, darling," she says, gently.

"Not till you go," says Kit, tightening the clasp of her arms.

"Well, that shall be in a moment, then," says Monica, with a stifled
sigh. All through the dragging day and evening she has clung to the
thought that surely her lover will come to bid her "good-night." And now
it is late, and he has not come, and----

She leans against the side of the wide-open casement, and gazes in sad
meditation upon the slumbering garden underneath. The lilies,--"tall
white garden-lilies,"--though it is late in the season now, and
bordering on snows and frosts, are still swaying to and fro, and giving
most generously a rich perfume to the wondering air. Earth's stars they
seem to her, as she lifts her eyes to compare them with the
"forget-me-nots of the angels," up above.

Her first disappointment about her love is desolating her. She leans her
head against the woodwork, and lifts her eyes to the vaguely-tinted sky.
Thus, with face upturned, she drinks