Though the spring be unfulfilled, it sweetens the year.
Just before Madelon reached Lot Gordon's house, she met Burr going to court Dorothy.

They were to be married in two weeks more.

Madelon and Burr exchanged a murmur of salutations and passed each other.
Madelon went directly into Lot's house, to his sitting-room, as she was used to do lately, and found Lot standing in the midst of the room, waiting for her, with a lighted candle in his hand.
"I heard your footstep when you came through that open space, where the road has a hollow echo," he said; "and I have been waiting for you ever since." "You could not hear me; it is a half-mile away," said Madelon.
"A half-mile! what's a hundred miles when 'tis the heart that listens, and not the ears?
Come; I have something I want to show you." Lot led the way and Madelon followed out of the room across the front entry, with its spiral of stair mounting its landscape-papered height, and Lot opened the door of the opposite room, the great north parlor.

"Wait here a minute," he said to Madelon, and she waited in the entry after he entered until he called her to follow.
Lot had lighted every candle in the great branching candelabra upon the shelf, and the room was full of light.

Madelon looked about her, and even her despairing calm was stirred a little.