The faint tentative colours struck in long glinting shafts between the trunks and branches of the stone pines and Scotch firs in the so-called Wilderness--a strip of uncultivated land within the confines of the grounds dividing the gardens from the open Warren to the West--and gleamed in at the windows, faintly dyeing the dimity hangings and embroidered linen counterpane of Damaris' bed.
Throughout the afternoon she had been less restless.

So that Mary Fisher, judging her to be fairly asleep, some five minutes earlier had folded her needlework together, and, leaving the chair where she sat sewing, went softly from the room.
But that brightening of sunset disturbed Damaris, bringing her slowly awake.

For a time she lay watching, though but half consciously the tinted radiance as--the trees now stirred by a little wind drawing out of the sunset--it shifted and flitted over the white surfaces.

At first it pleased her idle fancy.

But presently distressed her, as too thin, too chill, too restlessly unsubstantial, the veriest chippering ghost of colour and of light.