lighted by four deep-set windows, one to the south, one (a smaller
side lattice) to the east, two to the west, and still the corners were
left in gloom. The bookcases that covered the length and height of the
walls were of one blackness with the oak floor and ceiling. The
scattered blues and crimsons of the carpets (repeated in duller tones
in the old morocco bindings), the gilded tracery of the tooling, and
here and there a blood-red lettering-piece, gave an effect as of some
dim rich arabesque flung on to the darkness. At this hour the sunlight
made the most of all it found there; it washed the faded carpet with a
new dye; it licked every jutting angle, every polished surface, every
patch of vellum; it streamed out of the great golden white busts on
their pedestals in the windows, it lay in pale gleams over the eastern
walls till it perished in the marble blackness of the roof and floor,
sucked in as by an upper and nether abyss. This blackness intensified
the glory of the April world outside whose luminous greens and blues
were held like blazonry in the leaded lozenge panes. The two western
windows thrown open looked over the valley to the hills; Castle Hill
with its black battlement of pines, and round-topped Core; to Harmouth
Gap, the great doorway of the west wind, and the straight brown flank
of Muttersmoor, stretching to the sea. He seated himself by one of
these open lattices, looked at the view, one of the loveliest in south
Devon, and thought of Miss Poppy Grace. The vision of her that had
still attended him on his journey down faded as if rebuked by the
great tranquil presence of the hills. He was left supremely, magically
alone.

Now it may have been prescience, it may have been merely the
deplorable state of his nerves, but, as he continued to look out upon
that unfamiliar landscape, the beauty of it, in growing on him, became
almost intolerable. It affected him with an indescribable uneasiness,