In certain lands with what diplomacy falls the night, and how discreetly is the daylight gone: Those dimmer-and-dimmer, darker-and-lighter twilights of the North, so disconcerting in their playfulness, were unknown altogether in Pisuerga. There, Night pursued Day, as though she meant it. No lingering, or arctic sentiment! No concertinaishness.... Hard on the sun’s heels, pressed Night. And the wherefore of her haste; Sun-attraction? Impatience to inherit? An answer to such riddles as these may doubtless be found by turning to the scientists’ theories on Time and Relativity.
Effaced in the blue air of evening became everything, and with the darkness returned the wind.
“Sir, sir?... Ho, Hi, hiiiiiiiiiiii!!” Peter’s voice came again.
But transfixed, and loath just then for company, the Count made no reply.
A green-lanterned barge passed slowly, coming from the sea, and on the mountain-side a village light winked wanly here and there.
“Oh, why was I not _sooner_?” he murmured distractedly aloud.
“... I hope you’ve enough money for the boat, dear? ...?”
The long windows of the Summer-Palace were staring white to the moon, as the Countess of Tolga, her aigrettes casting _heroic_ shadows and hugging still her heath, re-entered the Court’s precincts on the arm of her friend.
One evening, as Mrs Montgomery was reading _Vanity Fair_ for the fifteenth time, there came a tap at the door. It was not the first interruption since opening the cherished green-bound book, and Mrs Montgomery seemed disinclined to stir. With the Court about to return to winter quarters, and the Summer-Palace upside down, the royal governess was still able to command her habitual British phlegm. It had been decided, moreover, that she should remain behind in the forsaken palace with the little prince, the better to “prepare” him for his forthcoming Eton exam.
Still, with disputes as to the precedence of trunks and dress-baskets simmering in the corridors without, it was easier to enjoy the Barley-sugar stick in one’s mouth, than the Novel in one’s hand.
“Thank God I’m not touchy!” Mrs Montgomery reflected, rolling her eyes lazily about the little white wainscoted room.
It was as if something of her native land had crept in through the doorway with her, so successfully had she inculcated its tendencies, or spiritual Ideals, upon everything around.