Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/185

 "Oh, it may not turn out so badly. The thing is just to get shaken down to the new conditions. And—tell Miss Grace, will you? not to worry over that little encounter of ours. I understand. It was the only thing she could do."

A flash of lightning quivered over the darkened fields, flooding them with sombre gold. A violent crash of thunder at the same moment terrified Mr. Jerrold's horse into a rampant position, so that against the deep purple of the lake it looked like some impressive beast of heraldry.

Mr. Jerrold snatched his hat, and, growling with pain, hurried out.

After the long drought, after the inertia of weeks of tropic heat, the storm rushed up from the lake as a deliverer to loose the chafing, burning bonds. Land and sky, in a torrent of rain, seemed to clasp each other like long separated lovers. Now there was such blackness that a face across the room could not be seen; now a vivid pinkish light disclosed the very cracks in the old paintings. The tops of the great trees were agitated into wild disorder, yet their rough trunks expressed invincible resistance. Nevertheless before long, with a shivering jar, one of them fell across the driveway.

The rain beat it down, as it lay prostrate, its foliage drooping on the sand, its branches, where only this morning Derek had watched a family of young squirrels wantonly frisking, now crumpled against the ground. Why had it been selected for disaster? Had it invited the turbulent embrace of the wind? He was sorry to see it fallen, and, from pitying it, he came to pitying himself. It seemed to him that in some mysterious way he had been made the plaything of a cruel and capricious fate. . ..

A sudden scream from the dining room made him start. "What's the matter now?" he asked irritably as he hurried