"You will wait?" she asked.
"Until it is dark."
She moved into the alcove of the fireplace and crouched down upon the seat, with her back against the wall nearest to the garden. I remained by the window, looking down the garden with the valley on my right. I saw the strip of cloud unfold across the valley and lower upon the hilltops like a solid roof, The hillsides darkened, the bed of the valley grew black—it seemed to me with the shadow of the wings of death. Here a tree shivered; from another there, the birds of a sudden chattered noisily. I turned and gazed across to Eagle Crag. The dale of Langstrath sloped upwards, facing me between the mountains; and as I gazed I saw the rain drive down from the Stake Pass to the mouth in a great slanting column. It deployed along the hillsides;—the mountains became unsubstantial behind it—it swept across the valley, lashing the house, bending the trees in the garden.
"And his eyes will be open," said Mrs. Herbert behind my shoulder.
I started round. Her white face was like a wax mask in the gloom of the chamber. But as I turned she moved back again to the fireplace. "It is cold," she said with a shiver. I set fire to the wood upon the hearth, and as the logs crackled and blazed, she bent forward and spread out her hands to the flame.
I dropped into the seat opposite to her, and so we sat for a long while in silence. Once, it seemed to me, that I heard the hoofs of a horse upon the gravel of the drive—galloping up to the house, and in a little galloping away from it. But what with the beating of the rain and the turmoil of the wind I could not make sure—nor, indeed, did I feel any concern to know. Once Mrs. Herbert raised her head to me and said, as if answering some objection which I had urged:
"It was because he loved me that he told the steward. That was his way. God made him so;" and her voice as she spoke was very soft. Her face, too, softened, as I could see from the glow of the fire, and I knew that her husband in his death was drawing her more surely towards him than he had ever done in life.
"He was very good to me," she said to herself. "It was I that plagued him. He was very good to me, and I—I love him."
It was as though she had forgotten he was dead, and more than one remark of the kind she made while the room darkened behind as and the night fell upon the world without, and the raindrops hissed down the chimney into the fire. I dared not rouse her, though the forgetfulness struck me as horrible, but once, I know, I shifted restively upon my seat, and she looked at me suddenly as though she had forgotten that I was there, as though, indeed, she did not know me. But in a little, recognition gleamed in her eyes, and they hardened slowly to hatred. However, she said nothing, but turned her face again to the fire, and so stared into it with eyes like pebbles.
After a while the wind lulled, the rain-drops hissed less often down the chimney and finally ceased altogether. A line of moonlight shot into the room and lay upon the carpet like a silver rod. The room became mistily luminous and then pitilessly bright. Meanwhile no one seemed as yet to be astir within the house.