The plantations were always weird at this hour of eve--more spectral far than in the leafless season, when there were fewer masses and more minute lineality.

The smooth surfaces of glossy plants came out like weak, lidless eyes; there were strange faces and figures from expiring lights that had somehow wandered into the canopied obscurity; while now and then low peeps of the sky between the trunks were like sheeted shapes, and on the tips of boughs sat faint cloven tongues.
But Grace's fear just now was not imaginative or spiritual, and she heeded these impressions but little.

She went on as silently as she could, avoiding the hollows wherein leaves had accumulated, and stepping upon soundless moss and grass-tufts.

She paused breathlessly once or twice, and fancied that she could hear, above the beat of her strumming pulse, the vehicle containing Fitzpiers turning in at the gate of her father's premises.

She hastened on again.
The Hintock woods owned by Mrs.Charmond were presently left behind, and those into which she next plunged were divided from the latter by a bank, from whose top the hedge had long ago perished--starved for want of sun.