Constance loved the moonlight. The broad glare of day is so garish and
extravagant. Besides, there is a restlessness and a buz no human being,
at least no sensible human being, can endure. Everything is on the stir.
Every creature, however paltry and insignificant, whether moth, mote, or
atom, seems busy. Whereas, one serene soft gaze of the moon appears to
allay nature's universal disquiet. The calm and mellow placidity of her
look, so heavenly and undisturbed, lulls the soul, and subdues its
operations to her influence.
Constance, we may suppose, accidentally wandered by the end of the
building, where, in the huge buttress of chimneys, a narrow crevice
admitted light into the chamber occupied by the fugitive. At times,
perhaps unconsciously, her eye wandered from the moon to this dreary
abode; where it lingered longest is more than we dare tell. She drew
nigh to the dark margin of the pond. The white swans were sleeping in
the sedge. At her approach they fluttered clumsily to their element;
there, the symbols of elegance and grace, like wreaths of sea-foam on
its surface, they glided on, apparently without an impulse or an effort.
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