The dark day is growing colder and more drear. The winds are sighing sadly. A shivering sobbing breeze, that rushes in a mournful fashion through the naked twigs, tells one the year is drawing to a close, and that truly it is "faint with cold, and weak with old."
Clarissa, riding along the forest path that leads to Sartoris, feels something akin to pleasure in the sound of the rushing torrent that comes from above and falls headlong into the river that runs on her right hand.
There is, too, a desolation in the scene that harmonizes with her own sad thoughts. She has watched the summer leaves and flowers decay, but little thought her own hopes and longings should have died with them. Is she never to know peace, or joy, or content again? On her "rests remembrance like a ban:" she cannot shake it off.
"Rest! rest! Oh, give me rest and peace!" she cries aloud to her soul, but no rest cometh. The world seems colorless, without tint or purpose. She would gladly forget, if that might be, but it seems impossible to her.
"Ourselves we cannot recreate,
Nor get our souls to the same key
Of the remembered harmony."
The past—that is, her happy past—seems gone; the present is full of grief; the future has nothing to offer. This fact comes to her, and, with her eyes full of tears, she turns the corner and finds herself face to face with Horace Branscombe.
The old smile is on his face; he comes to her and holds out both his hands to take hers. He is worn and thin, and very handsome.
"I am too fortunate to meet you so soon," he says. "Yet I hardly think I should shake hands with you." Evidently, some thought unknown to her is in his mind.
"I am glad you have come to that conclusion," she says, "as there is no desire whatever on my part that our hands should meet."
He is plainly puzzled.