“The play is over, the audience may retire!” said Ponsonby, breaking the pause; even he had been subdued by the sublimity of the scene.
“If I were a pagan I should be a fire-worshipper,” said Franceline, as they moved away. “I think the worship of the sun is the most natural as well as the most poetic of all forms of idolatry.”
“That’s just what De Winton said the first time he saw the sun set from here!” exclaimed Capt. Anwyll triumphantly; “how comical that you should have hit on the very same idea! He said, by the way, that it was the finest sunset he had ever seen in England; it’s so wide and low, you see; he showed me a sketch he made of a sunset somewhere in the Vosges that he said it reminded him of. I forget the name of the valley; but it was uncommonly like; do you know the Vosges?”
“No; I have never been to that part of France.”
Lord Roxham glanced at her as she said this in a clear, low voice. He saw nothing in her countenance that afforded a clew to whatever he was looking for.
It had grown chilly now that the sun had set, and they had been standing several minutes on the knoll. Of one accord the three riders broke into a gallop as they entered the park, and dashed along between the pollard Wellingtonias, standing stiff and stark as tumuli on either side of the long avenue.
Lady Anwyll had gone to visit some poor sick woman in the neighborhood, and had not yet returned. The gentlemen went round to the stables, and Franceline to her room. She dressed herself quickly, wrote a short letter to her father according to her promise of writing to him every day during her absence, and then threw the window wide open and sat down beside it. It was fresh enough, and she wore only her muslin dress, but she did not feel the freshness of the air—she was too excited to be conscious of any external influence of the kind. She sat as motionless as a statue, gazing abstractedly over the empurpled sky where the moon appeared like a shred of white cloud. She had not sat there long when the fragrant fumes of a cigar came floating in through her window, followed soon by a sound of footsteps and voices. Ponsonby and his guest were coming in. Franceline did not close the window or move away, though the voices were now audible; the speakers had not entered the house; they were walking under the veranda that ran round the front. What matter? They were not likely to be talking secrets; she was welcome to listen, no doubt, to whatever they might have to say.
“There is the carriage coming,” said Ponsonby; “my mother is out too late with her rheumatism; I’ll pitch into her for it.”
“Yes; it doesn’t do to stay out after sunset when one has any chronic ailment of that sort. By the way, you mentioned De Winton just now; have you heard of him lately?”
“No; not since he left Berlin. It seems he was very near kicking the bucket there; he was awfully bad, and nobody with him but his man Stanton.”