The Mystery of the Semi-Detached

He was waiting for her, he had been waiting an hour and a half in a
dusty suburban lane, with a row of big elms on one side and some
eligible building sites on the other-and far away to the south-west
the twinkling yellow lights of the Crystal Palace. It was not quite
like a country lane, for it had a pavement and lamp-posts, but it was
not a bad place for a meeting all the same: and farther up, towards
the cemetery, it was really quite rural, and almost pretty, especially
in twilight But twilight had long deepened into the night, and still
he waited. He loved her, and he was engaged to be married to her, with
the complete disapproval of every reasonable person who had been
consulted. And this half-clandestine meeting was tonight to take the
place of the grudgingly sanctioned weekly interview-because a certain
rich uncle was visiting at her house, and her mother was not the woman
to acknowledge to a moneyed uncle, who might "go off" any day, a match
so deeply ineligible as hers with him.