ere
dead asleep, except the watchers, she stole out into the gallery. On
the other side were two windows, cut into the thick stone wall, and
flower pots were placed on the shelves thus formed, where great,
untrimmed, straggling geraniums grew, and strove to reach the light.
The window near Mr Bellingham's door was open; the soft, warm-scented
night air came sighing in in faint gusts, and then was still. It was
summer; there was no black darkness in the twenty-four hours; only
the light grew dusky, and colour disappeared from objects, of which
the shape and form remained distinct. A soft grey oblong of barred
light fell on the flat wall opposite to the windows, and deeper grey
shadows marked out the tracery of the plants, more graceful thus than
in reality. Ruth crouched where no light fell. She sat on the ground
close by the door; her whole existence was absorbed in listening;
all was still; it was only her heart beating with the strong, heavy,
regular sound of a hammer. She wished she could stop its rushing,
incessant clang. She heard a rustle of a silken gown, and knew it
ought not to have been worn in a sick-room; for her senses seemed to
have passed into the keeping of the invalid, and to feel only as he
felt. The noise was probably occasioned by some change of posture in
the watcher inside, for it was once more dead-still. The soft wind
outside sank with a low, long, distant moan among the windings of
the hills, and lost itself there, and came no more again. But Ruth's
heart beat loud. She rose with as little noise as if she were a
vision, and crept to the open window to try and lose the nervous
listening for the ever-recurring sound. Out beyond, under the calm
sky, veiled with a mist rather than with a cloud, rose the high, dark
outlines of the mountains, shutting in that village as if it lay in a
nest. They stood, like giants, solemnly watching for the end of Earth
and Time. Here and there a black round shadow reminded Ruth of some
"Cwm," or hollow, where she and her lover had rambled in sun and
in gladness. She then thought the land enchanted into everlasting
brightness and happiness; she fancied, then, that into a region so
lovely no bale or woe could enter, but would be charmed away and
disappear before the sight of the glorious guardian mountains. Now
she knew the truth, that earth has no barrier which avails against
agony. It comes lightning-like down from heaven, into the mountain
house and the town garret;