Why not wait until morning?"
"Because, beloved, I owe a great deal of money in the neighborhood.
Stephen can pay it for me. I have sent him word to do so. Why should we
waste our money? We have done with these boors. What they think of us,
what they say of us, shall we mind it, my soul, when we drive under the
peopuls and tamarinds at Barrackpore, or jostle the crowds upon the
Moydana, or sit under the great stars and listen to the tread of the
chokedars? All fate, Sophia! All fate, soul of my soul! What is
Sandal-Side? Nothing. What is Calcutta? Nothing. What is life itself, my
own one? Only a little piece out of something that was before, and will
be after."
* * * * *
Who that has seen the Cumberland moors and fells in July can ever forget
them?--the yellow broom and purple heather, the pink and white waxen
balls of the rare vacciniums, the red-leaved sundew, the asphodels, the
cranberries and blueberries and bilberries, and the wonderful green
mosses in all the wetter places; and, above and around all, the great
mountain chains veiled in pale, ethereal atmosphere, and rising in it as
airy and unsubstantial as if they could tremble in unison with every
thrill of the ether above them.
It was thus they looked, and thus the fells and the moors looked, one
day in July, eighteen months after the death of Squire William
Sandal,--his daughter Charlotte's wedding-day.
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