noon
Beautiful she looked , as , standing in the centre of the room , she rolled out the sonorous lines , her French accent giving a charming foreign coloring to the well-known verses : -- ` Now by the lips of those ye love , fair gentlemen of France , Charge for the golden lilies , -- upon them with the lance ! A thousand spears are striking deep , a thousand spears in rest , A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest ; And in they burst , and on they rushed , while , like a guiding star , Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre . ' And yet , after all my explanations , she only half understood it ; the ` knights ' were always ` nights ' in her mind , and the ` thickest carnage ' was always the ` thickest carriage . ' One March day she came at the appointed hour , soon after our noon dinner . The usual clear winter sky was clouded , and a wind blew the snow from the trees where it had lain quietly month after month . ` Spring is coming , ' said the old sergeant that morning , as he hoisted the storm-flag ; it 's getting wildlike . ' Jeannette and I went through the lessons , but towards three o'clock a north-wind came sweeping over the Straits and enveloped the island in a whirling snow-storm , partly eddies of white splinters torn from the ice-bound forest , and partly a new , fall of round snow pellets careering along on the gale , quite unlike the soft , feathery flakes of early winter .