Then
there was silence: and when she thought that all were dead
asleep, except the watchers, she stole out into the gallery. On
the other side were two windows, cut into the thick stone wall,
and flower-pots were placed on the shelves thus formed, where
great untrimmed, straggling geraniums grew, and strove to reach
the light. The window near Mr. Bellingham's door was open; the
soft, warm-scented night-air came sighing in in faint gusts, and
then was still. It was summer; there was no black darkness in the
twenty-four hours; only the light grew dusky, and colour
disappeared from objects, of which the shape and form remained
distinct. A soft grey oblong of barred light fell on the flat
wall opposite to the windows, and deeper grey shadows marked out
the tracery of the plants, more graceful thus than in reality.
Ruth crouched where no light fell. She sat on the ground close by
the door; her whole existence was absorbed in listening: all was
still; it was only her heart beating with the strong, heavy,
regular sound of a hammer. She wished she could stop its rushing,
incessant clang. She heard a rustle of a silken gown, and knew it
ought not to have been worn in a sick-room; for her senses seemed
to have passed into the keeping of the invalid, and to feel only
as he felt. The noise was probably occasioned by some change of
posture in the watcher inside, for it was once more dead-still.
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