on the top of a giant's grave in this antique land, Ethelberta
lifted her eyes to behold two sorts of weather pervading Nature at the
same time. Far below on the right hand it was a fine day, and the silver
sunbeams lighted up a many-armed inland sea which stretched round an
island with fir-trees and gorse, and amid brilliant crimson heaths
wherein white paths and roads occasionally met the eye in dashes and
zigzags like flashes of lightning. Outside, where the broad Channel
appeared, a berylline and opalized variegation of ripples, currents,
deeps, and shallows, lay as fair under the sun as a New Jerusalem, the
shores being of gleaming sand. Upon the radiant heather bees and
butterflies were busy, she knew, and the birds on that side were just
beginning their autumn songs.

On the left, quite up to her position, was dark and cloudy weather,
shading a valley of heavy greens and browns, which at its further side
rose to meet the sea in tall cliffs, suggesting even here at their back
how terrible were their aspects seaward in a growling southwest gale.
Here grassed hills rose like knuckles gloved in dark olive, and little
plantations between them formed a still deeper and sadder monochrome. A
zinc sky met a leaden sea on this hand, the low wind groaned and whined,
and not a bird sang.

The ridge along which Ethelberta rode divided these two climates like a
wall; it soon became apparent that they were wrestling for mastery
immediately in her pathway. The issue long remained doubtful, and this
being an imaginative hour with her, she watched as typical of her own
fortunes how the front of battle swayed--now to the west, flooding her
with sun, now to the east, covering her with shade: then the wind moved
round to the north, a blue hole appeared in the overhanging cloud, at
about the place of the north star; and the sunlight spread on both sides
of her.

The towers of the notable ruin to be visited rose out of the furthermost
shoulder of the upland as she advanced, its site being the slope and
crest of a smoothly nibbled mount at the toe of the ridge she had
followed. When observing the previous uncertainty of the weather on this
side Ethelberta had been led to doubt if the meeting would be held here
to-day, and she was now strengthened in her opinion that it would not by
the total absence of human figures amid the ruins, though the time of
appointment was past. This disposed of another question which had
perplexed