g moonlight outside, and when she
reached the window she drew in her breath. For there, close upon her, as
it seemed, like one of her own Apennines risen and stalking through the
night, towered a great mountain, cloud-wreathed, and gashed with vast
ravines. The moon was shining on it between two chasing clouds, and the
light and shade of the great spectacle, its illumined slopes, and
impenetrable abysses, were at once magnificent and terrible.

Netta shut the window with groping, desperate hands, and rushed back to
bed. Never had she felt so desolate, so cut off from all that once made
her poor little life worth living. Yet, though she cried for a few
minutes in sheer self-pity, it was not long before she too was asleep.

II

The day after the Melroses' arrival at the Tower was once more a day of
rain--not now the tempestuous storm rain which had lashed the mill
stream to fury, and blustered round the house as they stepped into it,
but one of those steady, gray, and featureless downpours that
Westmoreland and Cumbria know so well. The nearer mountains which were
wholly blotted out, and of the far Helvellyn range and the Derwentwater
hills not a trace emerged. All colour had gone from the grass and the
autumn trees; a few sheep and a solitary pony in the fields near the
house stood forlorn and patient under the deluge; heaven and earth met in
one fusion of rain just beyond the neglected garden that filled the front
court; while on three sides of the house, and penetrating through every
nook and corner of it, there rose, from depths far below, the roar of the
stream which circled the sandstone rock whereon the Tower was built.

Mrs. Melrose came down late. She descended the stairs slowly, rubbing her
cold hands together, and looking forlornly about her. She wore a dress of
some straw-coloured stuff, too thin for the climate of a Cumbria autumn,
and round her singularly small and fleshless neck, a wisp of black
velvet. The top of the head was rather flat, and the heavy dark hair,
projecting stiffly on either side of the face, emphasized at once the
sharpness of the little bony chin, the general sallowness of complexion,
and the remarkable size and blackness of the eyes. There was something
snakelike about the flat head, and the thin triangular face; an effect
which certainly belied the little lady, for there was nothing malicious
or sinister in her personality.

She had not yet set eyes on her husband, who had