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As they paused to cross the road, she glanced as though involuntarily at her companion. His dark morning clothes and rather abstracted air created an atmosphere of sombreness about him of which she was suddenly conscious. "Hugh, why don't you wear uniform in town?" she asked. "Why should I?" he replied. "After all, I am not really a fighting man, you see." "It's so becoming," she sighed.
She was dressed from head to foot in sombre black, which made her neck and hands appear almost dazzlingly white. Perhaps it was also the sombreness of her attire which gave a look of fragility an almost painful fragility to her appearance.
Having intrenched himself behind his fortifications of reserve, he was able to maintain just the right shade of dignity, when, in the half-light of the midwinter afternoon, Diane glided into the big, book-lined apartment, in which the comfortable air induced through long occupancy by people of means did not banish a certain sombreness.
Theodore Hastings was forty-eight years old, which her friends said was the reason why her mansion on Fifth Avenue was furnished and lit with the delicate sombreness of an old Italian palace. There was about it none of the garishness, the almost resplendent brilliancy associated with the abodes of many of our neighbours.
But then she turned to Lucy, and began to assist her with her cloaks. "Oh, thank you," said Lucy; "I'm not cold, not very at least. Don't trouble yourself: I can do it." But here she had made a false boast, for her fingers had been so numbed that she could not do nor undo anything. They were all in black, of course; but the sombreness of Lucy's clothes struck Fanny much more than her own.
I had not expected a letter; and what a comfort it was to me in my loneliness and sombreness! Then I read, and re-read, and re-re-read, and quadruply, quintuply, and sextuply re-read my epistle, until I had it all by heart, and then continued to re-read it for the sake of the penmanship.
And the sombreness and gloom of the melancholy place increased instead of diminished as we drew nearer to it, after leaving behind us the pleasant oasis of Tor Bridge and its little hotel that anglers and walkers love. The prison settlement was stuck like a black vice-spot in the midst of wide purity. Gloom hung over it in a pall, and stole the warmth from the sunshine.
As I sat, the strange and melancholy suggestion of the dead man speaking out of that great kind heart of his, now dust, the strong contrast between the brilliant sunlight and the heavy sombreness of the cypresses of death, the song of spring birds and the sound of children's voices, were strangely pathetic. I rose up and paced that little deadman's ground which was still and quiet.
Circumstances alter us less than we think. If we are of a gay temperament gay we shall be through all. If sombre, no happiness can drive that sombreness away. Lady Cantourne was meant for happiness and a joyous motherhood. She had had neither; but she went on being "meant" until the end that is to say, she was still cheery and capable.
Persons who have no country-houses, and whose fortunes are inadequate to a London expenditure, find here, I suppose, a sort of town and country life in one. In its present aspect, the town is of no great age. In contrast with the antiquity of many places in its neighborhood, it has a bright, new face, and seems almost to smile even amid the sombreness of an English autumn.
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