But my lady herself, sitting alone amid the rose-colored curtains, looking blankly out at the menacing sky, wore a face as dark as that sky itself. She had wasted to a shadow; dark circles under her hollow eyes told of sleepless nights and wretched days; her cheeks were haggard, her lips bloodless.
The white morning-dress she still wore clung loosely around her wasted figure; all the bright hair was pushed impatiently off her face and confined in a net.
No one who had seen Harrie Hunsden, radiant as Hebe, blooming as Venus, daring as Diana, at the memorable fox-hunt of a little more than a year ago, would ever have recognized this haggard, pallid, wretched-looking Lady Kingsland as the same.
She sat still and alone, gazing out at the dreary desolation of earth and heaven. The great house was still as a tomb; the bustle of the servants' regions was far removed, the gnawing of a mouse behind the black paneling, the soft ticking of the toy clock sounded unnaturally loud.
"Darkening," Harriet thought, looking at the leaden twilight—"darkening, like my life. Not two months a wife, and his love and trust gone forever. May Heaven pity me, for there is none on earth!"
There was a tap at the door. Lady Kingsland had learned to know that soft, light tap.
"Come in," she said; and Sybilla entered.
She did not pause at the closed door as usual; she glided noiselessly across the room and stood beside her. So like a ghost she came, her dead-black garments making no rustle, her footfall making no sound, her white face awfully corpse-like in the spectral light, her black eyes glowing like a cat's in the dark; my lady shrunk in absolute affright.
"Don't come any nearer!" she cried, putting out her hands. "What do you want?"
"I have seen Mr. Parmalee, my lady."