However, she tempered a little
her decorous following of Mistress Perkins's precepts, and she and
Thomas went hand in hand up the lane and across the fields.
There was no dew that night, and the moon was full. It was after nine
o'clock when Thomas left her at the gate in the fence which separated
Evelina Adams's garden from the field, and watched her disappear
between the flowers. The moon shone full on the garden. Evelina
walked as it were over a silver dapple, which her light gown seemed
to brush away and dispel for a moment. The bushes stood in sweet
mysterious clumps of shadow.
Evelina had almost reached the house, and was close to the great
althea bush, which cast a wide circle of shadow, when it seemed
suddenly to separate and move into life.
The elder Evelina stepped out from the shadow of the bush. "Is that
you, Evelina?" she said, in her soft, melancholy voice, which had in
it a nervous vibration.
"Yes, Cousin Evelina."
The elder Evelina's pale face, drooped about with gray curls, had an
unfamiliar, almost uncanny, look in the moonlight, and might have
been the sorrowful visage of some marble nymph, lovelorn, with
unceasing grace. "Who--was with you?" she asked.
"The minister," replied young Evelina.
"Did he meet you?"
"He met me in the lane, Cousin Evelina.
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