“What splendid, melancholy eyes he has!” said May, with unusual ardor.

“Ah! you think so?”

“Of course I do, and such hair!  Why, Mr. Bennet, did you ever see such magnificent hair—­”

“Oh, you like black hair?”

“And his voice—­”

“Now, May—­”

“Well, Sir.”

“Please—­”

What merry light in the fairy eyes!  What dazzling splendor of love and happiness in the face that turned to his as he laid her arm in his own!  One would have thought she, too, had been admitted a junior partner in some most prosperous firm.

They passed along the street, which was full of people, and Gabriel and May unconsciously looked at the crowd with new eyes and thoughts.  Can it be possible that all these people are so secretly happy as two that we know? thought they.  “All my life,” said Gabriel to himself, without knowing it, “have I been going up and down, and never imagined how much honey there was hived away in all the hearts of which I saw only the rough outside?” “All my life,” mused May, with sweet girl-eyes, “have I passed lovers as if they were mere men and women?” And under her veil, where no eye could see, her cheek was flushed, and her eyes were sweeter.

They passed up Broadway and turned across to the Bowery.  Crossing the broad pavement of the busy thoroughfare, they went into a narrow street beyond, and so toward the East River.  At length they stopped before a low, modest house near a quiet corner.  A sloppy kitchen-maid stood upon the area steps abreast of the street.  A few miserable trees, pining to death in the stone desert of the town, were boxed up along the edge of the sidewalk.  A scavenger’s cart was joggling along, and a little behind, a ragman’s wagon with a string of jangling bells.  The smell of the sewer was the chief odor, and the long lines of low, red brick houses, with wooden steps and balustrades, and the blinds closed, completed a permanent camp of dreariness.

“Does Fanny Newt live there?” asked Gabriel, in a tone which indicated that there might be hearts in which honey was not abundantly hived.

“Yes,” said May, gravely.  “You know they have very little to live upon, and—­and—­oh dear, I don’t like to speak of it, Gabriel, but they are very miserable.”

Gabriel said nothing, but rang the bell.

The sloppy servant having stared wildly for a moment at the apparition of blooming love that had so incomprehensibly alighted upon the steps, ducked under them, and in a moment reappeared at the door.  She seemed to recognize May, and said “Yes’m” before any question had been asked.

Gabriel and May walked into the little parlor.  It was dark and formal.  There was a black haircloth sofa with wooden edges all over it, so that nobody could lean or lounge, or do any thing but sit uncomfortably upright.  There were black haircloth chairs, a table with two or three books; two lamps with glass drops upon the mantle; a thin cheap carpet; gloom, silence, and a complicated smell of grease—­as if the ghosts of all the wretched dinners that had ever been cooked in the house haunted it spitefully.