"
Cynthia made no reply.
CHAPTER XVI
Mrs. Friend was sitting in the bow-window of the "Fisherman's Rest," a
small Welsh inn in the heart of Snowdonia. The window was open, and a
smell of damp earth and grass beat upon Lucy in gusts from outside,
carried by a rainy west wind. Beyond the road, a full stream, white and
foaming after rain, was dashing over a rocky bed towards some rapids
which closed the view. The stream was crossed by a little bridge, and
beyond it rose a hill covered with oak-wood. Above the oak-wood and along
the road to the right--mountain forms, deep blue and purple, were
emerging from the mists which had shrouded them all day. The sun
was breaking through. A fierce northwest wind which had been tearing the
young leaf of the oak-woods all day, and strewing it abroad, had just
died away. Peace was returning, and light. The figure of Helena had just
disappeared through the oak-wood; Lucy would follow her later.
Behind Mrs. Friend, the walls of the inn parlour were covered deep in
sketches of the surrounding scenery--both oil and water-colour, bad and
good, framed and unframed, left there by the artists who haunted the inn.
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