The autumn darkness had almost fallen upon the multitudinous tombs of Greenwood before Claire was willing to leave that of her father. His name, cut in the modest gray of the stone, seemed for hours afterward cut into her conscience as well. The grand repose of the place, too, left its haunting thrill in her soul. A great sombre note had been struck through all her being, at a time when brain and nerves had begun to feel the full intoxication of worldly longing. While she was living intensely, death had come to her in the shape of keen, reproachful reminder. The vast cemetery had now no vernal or summer charm. Above, the sky was soft as a clouded turquoise, but underfoot, and on tree and shrub, the lovely melancholy of waning autumn met the bitter melancholy of a far more woful decay. It was all like one mighty threnody put to mighty yet very tender music. With a certain sinister and piercing eloquence, moreover, this huge, mute city of death addressed Claire. Many noted family names had of late passed into her memory, as those of people whom it would be safe, wise, politic to know; and not a few of these she now saw, lettered on slabs or shafts, and graven over the portals of vaults. Each one, as her gaze read it, wore a frightful sarcasm. More than once she closed her eyes and shuddered, as the carriage made both exit and entrance here in this sad domain. The perfect culture of the place rendered its doleful pathos even more poignant. The dead were not neglected, here; others, now alive and of the bright world she had yearned to triumph in, must soon lie down beside them. The narrow beds were kept well tended, perhaps, for just this dreary and hideous reason. That night she spent almost without sleep. She heard her mother's vindictive voice ring through the stillness; she had waking visions of her father's face, clad with an angelic rebuke; she seemed to listen once more while Beverley Thurston spoke those words of remonstrance and chiding which were the last he had uttered in her presence: "I warn you against yourself ... there is an actual curse hanging over you ... it will surely fall, unless by the act of your own will you change it into a blessing."