“Miss Clarissa is very good,” Lisbeth answered. “And so are you. But dear Miss Clarissa has been threatening me with an untimely grave, as the result of night air, ever since I was six months old; so, perhaps, I am not so grateful as I ought to be. I love darkness rather than light, upon the whole, and don’t find that it disagrees with me; perhaps because my deeds are evil.”
“Perhaps,” dryly.
For fully two minutes, she gathered her flowers in silence, while Anstruthers waited, and looked at her; but at last she stood upright, and their eyes met.
“It is a beautiful night,” she remarked, sententiously.
“Yes.”
“We have had a great number of lovely nights, lately.”
“Yes.”
She busied herself with her roses for a little while, to the exclusion of everything else, and then she gave it up.
“Well,” she said, “suppose we go into the house. I can do nothing with them here. The fact is, I don’t know why I gathered them, unless it was from an impulse of destructiveness. Let us go.”
“Stop a moment,” he said; nay, almost commanded her.