Page:Romance & Reality 1.pdf/272

266 ; but it can be a glad and guileless time—and Helen's had been a very happy childhood. But the dark or bright day finds its end in night, and again the phaeton retraced the morning's road. Every tree and field were now silvered with the soft moonlight—there was a repose around which even the voice seemed too rudely to break. They were both silent—but did Emily find the evening's silence less delightful or less dangerous? "How infinitely," said Lorraine at last, "I prefer a night like this—a sky broken by a thousand clouds—to one entirely cloudless! The clear sky is too forcible a contrast to ourselves—it is too bright, too calm for sympathy with our troubled state—I almost dislike the perfect repose in which I can have no part—while the shadows that to-night gather round the moon seem to have a fellow-feeling with our checkered existence." Emily made no answer—a sudden weight had fallen on her spirits—her eyes were full of unbidden tears—a voice seemed to arise within her, and to say, "To-night—even to-night—you stand on the threshold of your fate: happiness is only turning one last and lonely look before it leaves you for ever."