Not a bird chirped as yet. Not a leaf
stirred. But in this ghostly twilight the solitary gas lamps were
beginning to show pale; and in the southern heavens the silver sickle of
the moon, stealing over to the west, seemed to be taking the night with
it, and leaving these faintly lilac skies to welcome the uprising of the
new day.
At first, indeed, there was something curiously uncanny--something
unearthly and phantasmal almost--in the spectacle of these figures, the
women in white, the men in black, moving through this wan light; and
their voices sounded strangely in the dead silence; but ere long a soft
saffron tinge began to show itself in the east; one or two scraps of
cloud in the violet skies caught a faint touch of the coming dawn; there
was a more generous tone on the masses of foliage, on the flower-beds,
and on the grass; and now the cheerful chirping of the birds had begun
among the leaves. And what more beautiful surroundings could have been
imagined for the production of any pastoral entertainment? The wide lawn
was bounded on one side by a dense thicket of elms and limes and
chestnuts, and on the other by a tall, dark hedge of holly; while here
and there was a weeping-willow, round the stem of which a circular seat
had been constructed, the pendulous branches enclosing a sort of rustic
bower.
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