Her black eyes, fierce with passion and blood- rimmed as a cobra's, glittered as he passed among the tree-trunks towards her, eager with his errand of devotion.
Harold was a man of strong purpose.

Had he not been, he would never have come on his present errand.

Never, perhaps, had any suitor set forth on his quest with a heavier heart.

All his life, since his very boyhood, had been centred round the girl whom to-day he had come to serve.

All his thought had been for her: and to-day all he could expect was a gentle denial of all his hopes, so that his future life would be at best a blank.
But he would be serving Stephen! His pain might be to her good; ought to be, to a certain extent, to her mental ease.