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The sun set, the moon rose, the stars glittered; the infinite leaves stood out dark and solid, as if cut out of black marble; all was dismal silence and dread suspense to the solitary watcher. Yet the lady of Huntercombe Hall sat on, sick at heart, but patient, beneath that solemn sky.
A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom. She lifted her arms, she leaned back against the wind, her skirt dipped and flared, a lock blew wild.
Ah! if they could but meet. Suppose she should accost that feverish watcher, should ask him to direct her: "I beg your pardon, Monsieur. How can I get to the Seine?" He would recognize her at once. "What! Can it be you, Mam'zelle Zizi? What are you doing out-of-doors at this time of night?" "I am going to die, Frantz. You have taken away all my pleasure in living."
It has been called pride in charms which we do not possess, but it also serves to place actual charms in a brighter light, and that I expect from this fair one. If she knows how to avoid extravagance, it will willingly be indulged. But her ambition, Luis; perils may arise from that. If it begins to stir too covetously, remember your duty as watcher sound the horn and set the packs upon her."
He almost smiles to himself as he speculates upon her. Once there was just such another, no, the other was unlike her in all but youth and beauty, with a hundred coquettish ways where this one is honest, simple, and sincere. Could she have served a table gravely like this, and made no vain use of lovely eyes or dimpled mouth? He goes up-stairs and takes his place as a watcher.
He had not to seek far, for when the tube of the telescope pointed to within about three points of the starboard bow a small dark blot swept into the field of view. Yes, there it was, quite unmistakably this time, and a single moment's observation of it satisfied the anxious watcher that he saw before him the royals and topgallant-sails of a vessel apparently of no very great size.
Hecate, too, had heard the cry of Persephone; she had sorrow for Demeter's sorrow: she spoke to her as the two stood upon that dark, high hill, and told her that she should go to Helios for tidings to bright Helios, the watcher for the gods, and beg Helios to tell her who it was who had carried off by violence her child Persephone. Demeter came to Helios.
I was still within sound of the bleating killdeers when a rather large, greenish-gray bird flapped heavily but noiselessly from a muddy spot in the grass to the top of a stake and faced me. Here was a child of the marsh. Its bolt-upright attitude spoke the watcher in the grass; then as it stretched its neck toward me, bringing its body parallel to the ground, how the shape of the skulker showed!
Maybe she hath reached for the pearls or hath danced into his net." And so the fly sang of the watcher in the wood, and his song I shall sing thee, lest thou grow weary of my prose: Deep in the wood's recesses cool I see the fairy dancers glide, In cloth of gold, in gown of green, My lord and lady side by side.
In about ten minutes the police commissioner and the coroner, followed by two roundsmen with a litter, joined the solitary watcher, and the latter could return to his post. The policemen set down their litter and waited for orders, while the coroner and the commissioner bent over the corpse.