Over the garden was the dense grey blackness of an obliterated
dawn. The trees, not yet detached from the ground of night, showed
like monstrous skeletons of the whole immense body of gloom, while the
violent rocking of their branches made them one with that dark and
wandering tumult of cloud and wind.
The shaft of light no longer lay upon the lawn; Mr. Rickman's lamp
was out; therefore, she argued, Mr. Rickman had gone; having, in the
recklessness of his genius, forgotten to close the library windows.
One of the west windows creaked and crashed by turns as it swung
heavily in its leaded frame. Lucia put on her dressing gown and
slippers, threw a light shawl about her shoulders, and went down to
fasten the lattice. A small swinging lamp gave light to the hall and
staircase. A gleam followed her into the library; it lay in a pool
behind her, its thin stream lost in the blackness of the floor. She
could distinguish nothing in the room but the three dim white busts on
their dusky pedestals. Behind the latticework the window panes were
like chequered sheets of liquid twilight let down over the face of the
night.
The wind held the open lattice backwards, and she had some difficulty
in reaching the hasp. A shallow gust ran over the floor, chilling her
half-naked feet. As she leaned out on the sill a great fear came over
her, the fear that had always possessed her in childhood at the coming
and passing of the night.
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