Page:Ethel Churchill 2.pdf/328

326 a light, and then, as if she had forgotten something, hurried to the library, and carefully locked the door. First returning to see that the fire had kindled, she then went to the window, which, with the first gleam of moonlight, she cautiously unclosed, and stepped into the shrubbery. A small drizzling rain was beginning to fall, but she heeded it not; and, approaching a tree that stood near, began to gather the green fruit, with which its branches were thickly covered. Any one who had seen her, might have been pardoned for believing, from that hour, in supernatural appearances. Her tall figure was wrapped in a loose white robe, and her long black hair hung down to her waist, already glistening with the raindrops. The moonlight fell directly on her face, whose features seemed rigid as those of a statue, while the paleness was that of a corpse; but the large gleaming eyes, so passionate and so wild, be longed to life—life, racked by that mental agony, life, and human life, only knows. It was an almond-tree beneath whose boughs she stood. A few weeks since they had been