“A happy New Year to you, Philip, and may God have you in His keeping all the days thereof!”
He took her hand, and shook it warmly in reply. The flush on her cheek deepened as she withdrew it. Alice Rose said something curtly about the lateness of the hour and her being much tired; and then she and her daughter went upstairs to the front chamber and Philip and Coulson to that which they shared at the back of the house.
Kinraid’s Return to Monkshaven
From Sylvia’s Lovers, 1863
This description of the meeting of Sylvia’s two lovers after her marriage to Philip Hepburn is the most dramatic scene in the story.
Someone stood in the lane just on the other side of the gap; his back was to the morning sun; all she saw at first was the uniform of a naval officer, so well known in Monkshaven in those days.
Sylvia went hurrying past him, not looking again, although her clothes almost brushed his as he stood there still. She had not gone a yard—no, not half a yard—when her heart leaped up and fell again dead within her, as if she had been shot.
“Sylvia!” he said, in a voice tremulous with joy and passionate love. “Sylvia!”
She looked round; he had turned a little, so that the light fell straight on his face. It was bronzed, and the lines were strengthened; but it was the same face she had last seen in Haytersbank Gully three long years ago and had never thought to see in life again.