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 jagged V of the canyon, and threadbare clouds of pale rose and jade, lemon and amber. The oily brown log cottages silhouetted near the outlet had the pictorial value of black against the living pearl of the water, and Louise's flower beds were banked with something mauve dulled by dew. Frost-bitten, orange-red geraniums in wooden urns raised high on crooked tree-stumps made hectic blurs on each side of the main cottage. Farther off, and higher than the tops of the pine trees which rose above the pervasive lavender mist, were clusters of yellow and crimson foliage and slender tree trunks that stood out like strokes of Chinese white. Higher yet were stretches of rusty gorse which finally straggled off to bare patches of buff-hued turf ending in the rock walls of Hardscrapple, whose irregular peaks, four thousand feet above, were faintly edged with silver light.

At the end of the pine ridge to the right of the lake, surmounting a broad meadow, standing out from the wooded slope of the mountain, and bringing the whole landscape to a focus, was the Castle with its severe lines, its broad balconies and high windows. One terrace dominated the lake, while another looked over the top of the pine ridge towards the distant valley where the river twisted its way for thirty miles through a grey-green sage plain broken by occasional dark islands of pine and bounded on the farther side by patchy brown and green risings culminating in a lumpy horizon.