But towards evening the cloud lifted, revealing a watery
sunset, spread in timid reds and yellows behind Stone Horse Head and the
curving coast-line beyond, away to Stourmouth and Barryport. The faint
tentative colours struck in long glinting shafts between the trunks and
branches of the stone pines and Scotch firs in the so-called
Wilderness--a strip of uncultivated land within the confines of the
grounds dividing the gardens from the open Warren to the West--and
gleamed in at the windows, faintly dyeing the dimity hangings and
embroidered linen counterpane of Damaris' bed.
Throughout the afternoon she had been less restless. So that Mary Fisher,
judging her to be fairly asleep, some five minutes earlier had folded her
needlework together, and, leaving the chair where she sat sewing, went
softly from the room.
But that brightening of sunset disturbed Damaris, bringing her slowly
awake. For a time she lay watching, though but half consciously the
tinted radiance as--the trees now stirred by a little wind drawing out of
the sunset--it shifted and flitted over the white surfaces.
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