But the inclination to focus the mundane and embittered features of the fanatic Countess, as she lectured her boatmen for forgetting their oars, or, being considerably superstitious, to count the moles on their united faces as an esoteric clue to the Autumn Lottery, waned a little before the mystery of the descending night.
Beneath a changing tide of deepening shadow, the lifeless valleys were mirroring to the lake the sombreness of dusk. Across the blue forlornness of the water, a swan, here and there, appeared quite violet, while coiffed in swift clinging, golden clouds, the loftiest hills alone retained the sun.
A faint nocturnal breeze, arising simultaneously with the Angelus-bell, seemed likely to relieve, at the moon’s advent, the trials to her patience of the Countess Yvorra: “who must be cursing,” the Count reflected, turning the telescope about with a sigh, to suit her sail.
Ah poignant moments when the heart stops still! Not since the hour of his exile had the Count’s been so arrested.
From the garden Peter’s voice rose questingly; but the Count was too wonder-struck, far, to heed it.
Caught in the scarlet radiance of the afterglow, the becalmed boat, for one brief and most memorable second, was his to gaze on.
In certain lands with what diplomacy falls the night, and how discreetly is the daylight gone: Those dimmer-and-dimmer, darker-and-lighter twilights of the North, so disconcerting in their playfulness, were unknown altogether in Pisuerga. There, Night pursued Day, as though she meant it. No lingering, or arctic sentiment! No concertinaishness.... Hard on the sun’s heels, pressed Night. And the wherefore of her haste; Sun-attraction? Impatience to inherit? An answer to such riddles as these may doubtless be found by turning to the scientists’ theories on Time and Relativity.
Effaced in the blue air of evening became everything, and with the darkness returned the wind.
“Sir, sir?... Ho, Hi, hiiiiiiiiiiii!!” Peter’s voice came again.
But transfixed, and loath just then for company, the Count made no reply.