And this stayed by her now,
rather than any active call for mourning.
She inhaled the dank chillness of the fog gratefully. It suited the
occasion better far than sunshine and bright skies. For winter,
darkness, sullen flowing waters and desolate crying winds furnished the
accompaniment of those earlier meetings. Hearing the tolling bell she
strove to relive them, and found she did so with singularly mounting
wealth and precision of detail. Not only vision but sense pushed
backward and inward, revitalizing what had been; until she ached with
suspense and yearning, shrewdly evaded dangers, surmounted obstructions
by action at once bold and wary and tasted the transfiguring rapture of
the end attained.
In the soberness of her middle years, occupied as she was with the rough,
exacting business of the inn, and with the management of accumulating
landed and other property--anxiety born of her son's perilous calling
never absent from her thought--Lesbia Faircloth inclined to live
exclusively in the present.
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