Kate shivered audibly, and wrapped her fur-lined mantle closer around her.
"What is that wretched bell for ?" she asked.
"It is the passing bell," replied the father, with a gloomy brow.

"You know the fever is in the village." "And someone is dead." She looked out with a dreary, shivering sigh over the bleak prospect.
Gaunt black trees, grim black marshes, dull black river, and low black sky.

Oh, how desolate! How desolate it all was--as desolate as her own dead heart.

What was the use of going away, what was the use of forgetting for a few poor moments, and then coming back to the old desolation and the old pain?
What a weary, weary piece of business life was at best, not worth the trouble and suffering it took to live! The drive to the Hall was such a short one, it hardly seemed to her they were seated before they were driving up the leafless avenue, where the trees loomed unnaturally large and black in the frosty air, and the dead leaves whirled in great wild drifts under the horse's feet.

The gloom and desolation were here before them too.