I told myself some murderer was going by, and the brutes perceived upon him the faint smell of blood; and the next moment, with a physical shock, I had applied the words to my own case! Here was a dismal disposition for a lover.

'Was ever lady in this humour wooed ?' I asked myself, and came near turning back.

It is never wise to risk a critical interview when your spirits are depressed, your clothes muddy, and your hands wet! But the boisterous night was in itself favourable to my enterprise: now, or perhaps never, I might find some way to have an interview with Flora; and if I had one interview (wet clothes, low spirits and all), I told myself there would certainly be another.
Arrived in the cottage-garden I found the circumstances mighty inclement.
From the round holes in the shutters of the parlour, shafts of candle-light streamed forth; elsewhere the darkness was complete.

The trees, the thickets, were saturated; the lower parts of the garden turned into a morass.

At intervals, when the wind broke forth again, there passed overhead a wild coil of clashing branches; and between whiles the whole enclosure continuously and stridently resounded with the rain.