Yet I know not; just now the bells were
playing 'There is a happy land, far, far away,' and that hymn makes
too great a demand upon the imagination to soothe amid instant
miseries.
In Mrs. Peckover's kitchen the music was audible in bursts. Clem and
her mother, however, it neither summoned to prepare for church, nor
lulled into a mood of restful reverie. The two were sitting very
close together before the fire, and holding intimate converse; their
voices kept a low murmur, as if; though the door was shut, they felt
it necessary to use every precaution against being overheard. Three
years have come and gone since we saw these persons. On the elder
time has made little impression; but Clem has developed noticeably.
The girl is now in the very prime of her ferocious beauty. She has
grown taller and somewhat stouter; her shoulders spread like those
of a caryatid; the arm with which she props her head is as strong as
a carter's and magnificently moulded. The head itself looks immense
with its pile of glossy hair. Reddened by the rays of the fire, her
features had a splendid savagery which seemed strangely at discord
with the paltry surroundings amid which she sat; her eyes just now
were gleaming with a crafty and cruel speculation which would have
become those of a barbarian in ambush.
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