So far as mortal vision went, it was a rose-colored future; but on such a night of silence that was not silence, of loneliness that was filled with still, small voices, of heavy darkness without, of lights burning in an empty house, it was rather of ashes of roses that one thought.
Haward went to the open window, and with one knee upon the window seat looked out into the windy, starlit night.

This was the eastern face of the house, and, beyond the waving trees, there were visible both the river and the second and narrower creek which on this side bounded the plantation.
The voice with which the waters swept to the sea came strongly to him.

A large white moth sailed out of the darkness to the lit window, but his presence scared it away.
Looking through the walnut branches, he could see a light that burned steadily, like a candle set in a window.

For a moment he wondered whence it shone; then he remembered that the glebe lands lay in that direction.
The parish was building a house for its new minister, when he left Virginia, those many years ago.

Suddenly he recalled that the minister--who had seemed to him a bluff, downright, honest fellow--had told him of a little room looking out upon an orchard, and had said that it should be the child's.
It was possible that the star which pierced the darkness might mark that room.