The Story Continued by Marian Halcombe

It was a misty, heavy evening. There was a sense of blight in the air; the flowers were drooping in the garden, and the ground was parched and dewless. The western heaven, as we saw it over the quiet trees, was of a pale yellow hue, and the sun was setting faintly in a haze. Coming rain seemed near⁠—it would fall probably with the fall of night. “Which way shall we go?” I asked “Towards the lake, Marian, if you like,” she answered. “You seem unaccountably fond, Laura, of that dismal lake.” “No, not of the lake but of the scenery about it. The sand and heath and the fir-trees are the only objects I can discover, in all this large place, to remind me of Limmeridge. But we will walk in some other direction if you prefer it.” “I have no favourite walks at Blackwater Park, my love. One is the same as another to me. Let us go to the lake⁠—we may find it cooler in the open space than we find it here.” We walked through the shadowy plantation in silence. The heaviness in the evening air oppressed us both, and when we reached the boathouse we were glad to sit down and rest inside. A white fog hung low over the lake. The dense brown line of the trees on the opposite bank appeared above it, like a dwarf forest floating in the sky. The sandy ground, shelving downward from where we sat, was lost