autumn midnights
Its light color contrasted well with the lofty pine-trees around it . But they , in turn , invested it with an air of secrecy and gloom , unrelieved by flowers or blossoming shrubs , of which there were no traces near the house , although in the rear there was a garden so formally regular that it looked like a penitentiary for flowers . These were the pine-trees that Hope Wayne had heard sing all her life -- but sing like the ocean , not like birds or human voices . In the black autumn midnights they struggled with the north winds that smote them fiercely and filled the night with uproar , while the child cowering in her bed thought of wrecks on pitiless shores -- of drowning mothers and hapless children . Through the summer nights they sighed . But it was not a lullaby -- it was not a serenade . It was the croning of a Norland enchantress , and young Hope sat at her open window , looking out into the moonlight , and listening .