I looked everywhere for the gleam of her silvery scarf, everywhere for Terence, while, the waltz music having ceased, the Spanish students played 'Love's Young Dream.' I hummed the words as the sweet old tune, strummed by the tinkling mandolins, vibrated clearly in the maze of other sounds:-- 'Oh! the days have gone when Beauty bright My heart's chain wove; When my dream of life from morn till night Was Love, still Love.
New hope may bloom and days may come, Of milder, calmer beam, But there's nothing half so sweet in life As Love's Young Dream.' At last, in a quiet spot under the oak-tree, the lately risen moon found Patricia's diamond arrow and discovered her to me.

The Japanese lanterns had burned out; she was wrapped like a young nun, in a cloud of white that made her eyelashes seem darker.
I looked once, because the moonbeam led me into it before I realised; then I stole away from the window and into my own room, closing the door softly behind me.
We had so far been looking only at conventionalities, preliminaries, things that all (who had eyes to see) might see; but this was different--quite, quite different.
They were as beautiful under the friendly shadow of their urban oak-tree as were ever Romeo and Juliet on the balcony of the Capulets.

I may not tell you what I saw in my one quickly repented-of glance.

That would be vulgarising something that was already a little profaned by my innocent participation.
I do not know whether Terence was heir, even ever so far removed, to any title or estates, and I am sure Patricia did not care: he may have been vulgarly rich or aristocratically poor.

I only know that they loved each other in the old yet ever new way, without any ifs or ands or buts; that he worshipped, she honoured; he asked humbly, she gave gladly.
How do I know?
Ah! that's a 'Penelope secret,' as Francesca says.
Perhaps you doubt my intuitions altogether.