Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/174

 notes came to them very plainly on the night air. It was a gay little waltz, with the undercurrent of sentiment that creeps into all the music of Germany. Its seductive invitation brought them close together, and they stood at the window looking out at the night, Alice nestling in the strong arm of the man beside her. She studied his face adoringly in the soft light. There was a trace of gray in the dark curls on his well-shaped head. One lock on the left side was almost white. She had noticed it again and again in the last few months, and it had somehow had a singularly vivid place in her thoughts when she considered giving him up. Now, that lock belonged to her with the rest of him. She decided to kiss it at the first opportunity.

Through the portières that separated the library from the music-room came the voice of her father, raised in more jubilant tones than she had heard from him in years. She smiled as she listened. How happy, how joyfully happy he and her mother were over to-night's betrothal!

It had taken all Mrs. Twombly's tact to draw her delighted husband out of the room and to make him grasp the fact that the lovers might like an hour together. He longed to sit with them and smoke and let his eyes rest on