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Slowly and with great majesty he sank behind the distant blue line, till only a glittering edge appeared and then that was gone. There were no clouds hanging over his setting, to be gilded and purpled by the parting rays, but a region of glory long remained, to show where his path had been. The eyes of both were fixed upon this beautiful scene, but only one was thinking of it.
The struggle seemed to have narrowed to an individual, contest for supremacy between Fentress and the judge. On the edge of the railed off space they confronted each other: the colonel, a tall, well-cared-for presence; the judge shabby and unkempt. For a moment their eyes met, while the judge's face purpled and paled, and purpled again. The silence deepened.
In the year mentioned, a traveller coming to the promontory to regale himself with the view there offered, would have mounted a wall, and, with the city at his back, looked over the bay of Neapolis, as charming then as now; and then, as now, he would have seen the matchless shore, the smoking cone, the sky and waves so softly, deeply blue, Ischia here and Capri yonder; from one to the other and back again, through the purpled air, his gaze would have sported; at last for the eyes do weary of the beautiful as the palate with sweets at last it would have dropped upon a spectacle which the modern tourist cannot see half the reserve navy of Rome astir or at anchor below him.
With a side-glance at the noble face beside her, pale olive-hued, worn and faded beyond the age of the woman by her great labours and her greater griefs, the arched black eyebrows sprinkled of late with grey, the eyelids thin over the mobile eyeballs, purpled with lack of sleep and secret, bitter weeping, the close-folded, deeply cut, eloquent mouth withered like a japonica-bloom that lingers on in frost, the strong, salient chin framed in the snowy, starched guimpe, she faltered: "You don't shy at the notion of the par the announcement in the Siege Gazette, I mean?..."
And presently, before dinner, she would contrive that they should have an hour by themselves in her sitting-room, and he would sit by the hearth and watch her quiet movements, and the way the bluish lustre on her hair purpled a little as she bent above the fire.
And directly the sun had disappeared the heavens above it purpled and became a lake of blood, whilst the Campagna turned to grey. At the far end of the fading plain there remained only that purple lake whose brasier slowly died out behind the black arches of the aqueduct, while in the opposite direction the scattered arches remained bright and rosy against a pewter-like sky.
Breathless and as one entranced he gazed upon her; saw how her long hair glowed a wondrous red 'neath the kisses of the dying sun; saw how her purpled gown, belted at the slender waist, clung about the beauties of her shapely body; saw how the little shoe peeped forth from the perfumed mystery of its folds, and so stood speechless, bound by the spell of her beauty.
As soon as I lost sight of Teviotdale another grand vista of golden and purpled hills and rich valleys burst upon my sight as suddenly as theatrical sceneries are shifted on the stage. Dined in a little, rural, unpoetical village bearing the name of Lilliesleaf.
An hour after sunset, Piers was climbing the hillside towards the Castle, now a looming shape against a sky still duskily purpled from the west. He climbed slowly, doubting at each step whether to go nearer, or to wave his hand and turn. Still, he approached. In the cottages a few lights were seen; but no one moved; there was no voice. His own footstep on the sward fell soundless.
"Draw near and look," said the harsh voice of the officer who commanded the grim, silent guard, as he stepped up to the strange-looking bundle, and waved his fan quickly to and fro over a protuberance in the centre. A black cloud of flies arose, and revealed a sight that will haunt Carpenter to his dying day the purpled, distorted face of a living man.
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