One by one they all walk away, and presently Moyne is lying in the dying sunshine, in all its usual quietude, with never a sound to disturb the calm of coming eve but the light rustling of the rising breeze among the ivy-leaves that are clambering up its ancient walls.
Kit and Terry are indoors, laughing merrily over the day, and congratulating themselves upon the success it has certainly been.
"Yes. I do think, Penelope, they all enjoyed themselves," says Miss Priscilla, in high glee; "and your claret-cup, my dear, was superb."
But Monica has stolen away from them all. The strange restlessness that has lain upon her all day is asserting itself with cruel vigor, and drives her forth into the shadows of the coming night.
All day long she has struggled bravely against it; but, now that the enforced necessity for liveliness is at an end, she grows dreamy, distraite, and feels an intense longing for solitude and air.
Again she walks through the now deserted garden, where the flowers, "earth's loveliest," are drooping their sweet heads to seek their happy slumbers. Past them she goes with lowered head and thoughts engrossed, and so over the lawn into the wood beyond.
Here Coole and Moyne are connected by a high green bank, that in early spring is studded and diamonded with primroses and now is gay with ferns. Not until she has reached this boundary does she remember how far she has come.
She climbs the bank, and gazes with an ever-growing longing at the cool shade in the forbidden land, at the tall, stately trees, and the foxgloves nodding drowsily.
It is a perfect evening, and as yet the god of day—great Sol—is riding the heavens with triumphant mirth, as though reckless of the death that draweth nigh. Shall he not rise again to-morrow morn in all his awful majesty, and so defy grim Mars? It is, indeed, one of those hours when heaven seems nearest earth, "as when warm sunshine thrills wood-glooms to gold," and "righteousness and peace have kissed each other," and Nature, tender mother, smiles, and all the forest deeps are by "a tender whisper pierced."
Conscience forbidding her, she abstains [from] entering those coveted woods, and, with a sigh, seats herself upon the top of the green bank.