‘Do you know,’ said she at last, as stealing from her story, ‘do you know who lives yonder?—I have never been down into that country—away off there, I mean; that house, that marble one,’ pointing far across the lower landscape; ‘have you not caught it? there, on the long hillside: the field before, the woods behind; the white shines out against their blue; don’t you mark it? the only house in sight.’

I looked; and after a time, to my surprise, recognised, more by its position than its aspect, or Marianna’s description, my own abode, glimmering much like this mountain one from the piazza. The mirage haze made it appear less a farmhouse than King Charming’s palace.

‘I have often wondered who lives there; but it must be some happy one; again this morning was I thinking so.’

‘Some happy one,’ returned I, starting; ‘and why do you think that? You judge some rich one lives there?’

‘Rich or not, I never thought; but it looks so happy, I can’t tell how; and it is so far away. Sometimes I think I do but dream it is there. You should see it in a sunset.’

‘No doubt the sunset gilds it finely; but not more than the sunrise does this house, perhaps.’

‘This house? The sun is a good sun, but it never gilds this house. Why should it? This old house is rotting. That makes it so mossy. In the morning, the sun comes in at this old window, to be sure—boarded up, when first we came; a window I can’t keep clean, do what I may—and half burns, and nearly blinds me at my sewing, besides setting the flies and wasps astir—such flies and wasps as only lone mountain houses know. See, here is the curtain—this apron—I try to shut it out with then. It fades it, you see. Sun gild this house? not that ever Marianna saw.’

‘Because when this roof is gilded most, then you stay here within.’

‘The hottest, weariest hour of day, you mean? Sir, the sun gilds not this roof. It leaked so, brother newly shingled all one side. Did you not see it? The north side, where the sun strikes most on what the rain has wetted. The sun is a good sun; but this roof, it first scorches, and then rots. An old house. They went West, and are long dead, they say, who built it. A mountain house. In winter no fox could den in it. That chimney-place has been blocked up with snow, just like a hollow stump.’

‘Yours are strange fancies, Marianna.’

‘They but reflect the things.’

‘Then I should have said, “These are strange things,” rather than, “Yours are strange fancies.”’

‘As you will,’ and took up her sewing.

Something in those quiet words, or in that quiet act, it made me mute again; while, noting, through the fairy window, a broad shadow stealing on, as cast by some gigantic condor, floating at brooding poise on outstretched wings, I marked how, by its deeper and inclusive dusk, it wiped away into itself all lesser shades of rock or fern.

‘You watch the cloud,’ said Marianna.

‘No, a shadow; a cloud’s, no doubt—though that I cannot see. How did you know it? Your eyes are on your work.’

‘It dusked my work. There, now the cloud is gone, Tray comes back.’

‘How?’