on the combe; how it was met with
the jagged gleam of the great white flash, and how the thunderous
explosion shook the earth. The combe, with its hill-tops on either side,
became like the scene of a battle, great armies, invisible in the sharp
torrents of rain, meeting each other with a fierce shock and recoil,
with now and then a trumpet-blast, and now the gleam that lit up tree
and copse, and anon the tremendous artillery. When the lightning came
she caught a glimpse of the winding line of the white road leading away
out of all this--leading into the world where she was going--and for a
moment escaped by it, even amid the roar of all the elements: then came
back, alighting again with a start in the familiar porch, amid all the
surroundings of the familiar life, to feel her mother's hand upon her
shoulder, and her mother's voice saying, "Have you got wet, my darling?
Did you get much of it? Come in, come in from the storm!"

"It is so glorious, mamma!" Mrs. Dennistoun stood for a few minutes
looking at it, then, with a shudder, withdrew into the drawing-room. "I
think I have seen too many storms to like it," she said. But Elinor had
not seen too many storms. She sat and watched it, now rolling away
towards the south, and bursting again as though one army or the other
had got reinforcements; while the flash of the explosions and the roar
of the guns, and the white blast of the rain, falling like a sheet from
the leaden skies, wrapped everything in mystery. The only thing that was
to be identified from time to time was that bit of road leading out of
it--leading her thoughts away, as it should one day lead her eager feet,
from all the storm and turmoil out into the bright and shining world.
Elinor never asked herself, as she sat there, a spectator of this great
conflict of nature, whether that one human thing, by which her swift
thoughts traversed the storm, carried any other suggestion as of coming
back.

Perhaps it is betraying feminine counsels too much to the modest public
to narrate how Elinor's things were all laid out for the inspection of
the ladies of the parish, the dresses in one room, the "under things" in
another, and in the dining-room the presents, which everybody was doubly
curious to see, to compare their own offerings with those of other
people, or else to note with anxious eye what was wanting, in order, if
their present had not yet been procured, to supply the gap. How to get
something that would lo