The gray, solemn, winter's noon was more night-like than the depth of
summer's night; dim-purple brooded the low skies over the white
earth, as Susan rode up to what had been Michael Hurst's abode while
living. It was a small farm-house carelessly kept outside,
slatternly tended within. The pretty Nelly Hebthwaite was pretty
still; her delicate face had never suffered from any long-enduring
feeling. If anything, its expression was that of plaintive sorrow;
but the soft, light hair had scarcely a tinge of gray; the wood-rose
tint of complexion yet remained, if not so brilliant as in youth; the
straight nose, the small mouth were untouched by time. Susan felt
the contrast even at that moment. She knew that her own skin was
weather-beaten, furrowed, brown,--that her teeth were gone, and her
hair gray and ragged. And yet she was not two years older than
Nelly,--she had not been, in youth, when she took account of these
things. Nelly stood wondering at the strange-enough horse-woman, who
stopped and panted at the door, holding her horse's bridle, and
refusing to enter.
"Where is Michael Hurst?" asked Susan, at last.
"Well, I can't rightly say. He should have been at home last night,
but he was off, seeing after a public-house to be let at Ulverstone,
for our farm does not answer, and we were thinking--"
"He did not come home last night?" said Susan, cutting short the
story, and half-affirming, half-questioning, by way of letting in a
ray of the awful light before she let it full in, in its consuming
wrath.
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