The shot of a rifle loses its sharpness in the moist air, and its smoke moves in a tardy little cloud towards the green rise, coppice-topped, that makes a background for the falling rain. The view from my Lady Dedlock's own windows is alternately a lead-coloured view and a view in Indian ink. The vases on the stone terrace in the foreground catch the rain all day; and the heavy drops fall--drip, drip, drip--upon the broad flagged pavement, called from old time the Ghost's Walk, all night. On Sundays the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit breaks out into a cold sweat; and there is a general smell and taste as of the ancient Dedlocks in their graves. My Lady Dedlock (who is childless), looking out in the early twilight from her boudoir at a keeper's lodge and seeing the light of a fire upon the latticed panes, and smoke rising from the chimney, and a child, chased by a woman, running out into the rain to meet the shining figure of a wrapped-up man coming through the gate, has been put quite out of temper. My Lady Dedlock says she has been "bored to death."
Therefore my Lady Dedlock has come away from the place in Lincolnshire and has left it to the rain, and the crows, and the rabbits, and the deer, and the partridges and pheasants. The pictures of the Dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish into the damp walls in mere lowness of spirits, as the housekeeper has passed along the old rooms shutting up the shutters. And when they will next come forth again, the fashionable intelligence--which, like the fiend, is omniscient of the past and present, but not the future--cannot yet undertake to say.

The view from my Lady Dedlock's windows is lead-coloured. The vases on the stone terrace catch the rain all day; and the heavy drops fall upon the broad flag-stoned pavement, known as the Ghost's Walk. On Sundays the little church in the park is mouldy; there is a general smell as of the ancient Dedlocks in their graves. My Lady Dedlock (who is childless), looking out in the early twilight from a game-keeper's lodge, and seeing a child running out into the rain to meet the wrapped-up figure of a man coming through the gate, has been put quite out of temper. My Lady Dedlock says she has been "bored to death."
Therefore my Lady Dedlock has come away from the place in Lincolnshire and has left it to the rain. The pictures of Dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish into the dark walls as the housekeeper has passed along the old rooms shutting up the shutters. And when they will next come forth again, the fashionable world cannot yet say.
