Now alone on the dark staircase she meditated on his words. When that malignant crone, Gossip, started on her round, what would happen? Suddenly the voice of her father adding up the indigo cargo fell upon her ears. He would end their happiness; a man powerful enough to kill the spirit of Easter in his home could do anything. Creeping through the narrow passage she came to the great north balcony window. There she paused and raised her eyes to the dome of the night. Long lines of stars were strung across the meadows of heaven. The dials of the world seemed suddenly stilled. Below the infinite peace a budding landscape sloped gently into a placid sea. Myriads of little lights in humble cots blinked an answer to the fires above. Leaning on the broad window-seat of blackened Jersey oak she tried to descry his dwelling, but the tree-tops shut it away. A few hours before, he had asked her to be his wife, and she, a Knickerbocker, had thrilled at his words. Like a tide the memory of his love swept back to her. Then on its surges came the stupor of desolation. The gates of Knickerbocker pride were strong. A second David might fail to force them. All her dreams were fantasies, with no bearing upon reality. All her hopes were sunbeams vanquished by one dark shadow. To her distorted imagination her family seemed accursed. Every face bore some mark of it, even the row of dim portraits in the room below. But, ah! there was one, a face turned to the rafters of the attic, whose bright eyes and red lips knew love untinctured by the dross of the world. In the darkness it rose before her strangely insistent. As in a time-blurred mirror she looked and saw herself, and the feeling, though uncanny, gave her a sense of comfort. A wind began to sigh in the garden. Through the boxwood maze and barren urns it swept. Smiling Flora, sleeping Endymion, and all the fabulous court that had stood there years before the coming of the Knickerbockers grew more humanly colored as the moon passed behind a cloud. Since York had become a queenly city and the wonder of the western world, mute and peacefully passive they had watched the seasons come and go. Countless lovers must have known them. She saw back into the springs, the flower times. Sedan chairs and swaying post-chaises had borne these dainty lovers all away. Oh, strange, sweet thought! She, too, would have to go--with him. Down by the pale and shivering elms the iron bar of the gate clicked. Dark figures were entering the garden. The gods and goddesses faded before her eyes. No one visited them on Easter eve. Her father did not keep the season. She steadied her knees on the slippery seat. The spray of arbutus she was wearing over her heart cut her hands as she pressed closer to the pane. "My aunts! they know!" she whispered to herself.