were flitting about
like the children of the gloamin', and the lamps of the laburnum and
lilac hung dusky among the trees of Osterfield Park.

Juliet, left all but alone in the house, sat at her window, reading. Her
room was on the first floor, but the dining-room beneath it was of low
pitch, and at the lane-door there were two steps down into the house, so
that her window was at no great height above the lane. It was open, but
there was little to be seen from it, for immediately opposite rose a
high old garden-wall, hiding every thing with its gray bulk, lovelily
blotted with lichens and moss, brown and green and gold, except the
wall-flowers and stone-crop that grew on its coping, and a running plant
that hung down over it, like a long fringe worn thin. Had she put her
head out of the window, she would have seen in the one direction a
cow-house, and in the other the tall narrow iron gate of the garden--and
that was all. The twilight deepened as she read, until the words before
her began to play hide and seek; they got worse and worse, until she was
tired of catching at them; and when at last she stopped for a moment,
they were all gone like a troop of fairies, and her reading was ended.
She closed the book, and was soon dreaming awake; and the twilight world
was the globe in which the dream-fishes came and went--now swelling up
strange and near, now sinking away into the curious distance.

Her mood was broken by the sound of hoofs, which she almost immediately
recognized as those of the doctor's red horse--great hoofs falling at
the end of long straight-flung steps. Her heart began to beat violently,
and confident in the protection of the gathering night, she rose and
looked cautiously out toward the side on which was the approach. In a
few moments, round the furthest visible corner, and past the gate in the
garden-wall, swung a huge shadowy form--gigantic in the dusk. She drew
back her head, but ere she could shape her mind to retreat from the
window, the solid gloom hurled itself thundering past, and she stood
trembling and lonely, with the ebb of Ruber's paces in her ears--and in
her hand a letter. In a minute she came to herself, closed her window,
drew down the blind, lighted a candle, set it on the window-sill, and
opened the letter. It contained these verses, and nothing more:--

My morning rose in laughter--
A gold and azure day.
Dull clouds came trooping after,
Livid, and sullen gray.

At