She sat up, her teeth chattering. It was _awful_; but she must
get up and shut it. Shivering, she crept out of bed, threw a shawl round
her, and made one flight across the floor, possessed with a mad alarm
lest the candle, which was flickering in the draught, should go out, and
leave her in darkness.
But now that the window was open she saw, as she approached, that the
night was not dark. There was a strong moonlight outside, and when she
reached the window she drew in her breath. For there, close upon her, as
it seemed, like one of her own Apennines risen and stalking through the
night, towered a great mountain, cloud-wreathed, and gashed with vast
ravines. The moon was shining on it between two chasing clouds, and the
light and shade of the great spectacle, its illumined slopes, and
impenetrable abysses, were at once magnificent and terrible.
Netta shut the window with groping, desperate hands, and rushed back to
bed. Never had she felt so desolate, so cut off from all that once made
her poor little life worth living. Yet, though she cried for a few
minutes in sheer self-pity, it was not long before she too was asleep.
II
The day after the Melroses' arrival at the Tower was once more a day of
rain--not now the tempestuous storm rain which had lashed the mill
stream to fury, and blustered round the house as they stepped into it,
but one of those steady, gray, and featureless downpours that
Westmoreland and Cumbria know so well.
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