Page:Elizabeth's Pretenders.djvu/92

Rh of all services, and began slowly to undress herself. The hands, now and again, fell listless, and once she rested her burning head between them, for some minutes, on the dressing-table. Then she heard a little movement in the verandah below—a door being closed and bolted; after which all was silence. She generally read before going to bed, but not to-night. She was restless and feverish, and walked up and down her room for some time. After that, throwing her white peignoir round her, she stepped out upon the balcony. The night was so black that even the outline of the elms against the sky was indistinguishable. It was scarcely cooler here than in her bedroom, but she could breathe better. There was space and utter darkness, and a silence broken only by the rumble of a storm far away among the hills. She felt disinclined to go to bed. Her mind was on the full stretch; incapable of oblivion. Atmospheric influences, no doubt, tended to aggravate her condition. Her heart was sore troubled, her thoughts tossed to and fro on a sea of perplexity.

Once a dog barked in the stable-yard, and once she heard the cry of the night-jay. There was no other sound but the distant roll of thunder at long intervals. The house had been still certainly for more than an hour, when a faint glimmer of light, streaming through the open window of the corridor next to her own, attracted her attention. By shifting her position a yard or two on the balcony where she stood, and leaning forward, she could look down the whole length of the broad passage, which ran, as I have said, from one end of the house to the other. A figure was gliding