It was a lovely evening, and the air full of the sweetness of lime blossom. The low sunlight made the plaster of our big old house a pale golden, and the old woodwork of its wooden eaves, wide and shaped like an inverted boat, as is the Swiss fashion, of a beautiful rosy purple. The dogs were lying on the house steps, by the great tubs of hydrangeas and flowering pomegranates; and beyond the sanded yard I could see the bent back of Vincent stooping among the hives in the kitchen garden. The grass beyond was brilliant green, all powdered with hemlock flower; and the sun made a deep track in the avenue, along which the cows were trotting home to be milked. I felt my heart break, as once or twice I had foolishly done as a child, and in a manner in which I have never felt it again despite all my later miseries. I suppose it was that I was only then really ceasing to be a child, though I had been married two years. It was evidently in my mother's thoughts, for she followed my glance with hers, and then said very solemnly, and kissing me again (she had not let go of me all this while), "My poor little Penelope! you must learn to be a woman. You will want all your strength and all your courage to help your husband." That was really the end, or the beginning. There were some weeks of plan-making and preparations, a bad dream which has faded away from my memory. And then, at the beginning of August of that year--1772--my husband and I started from Grandfey for St. Salvat's. I _September_ 29, 1772. This is my first night in what, henceforward, is going to be my home. The thought should be a happy and a solemn one; but it merely goes on and on in my head like the words of a song in some unknown language. Eustace has gone below to his uncles; and I am alone in this great room, and also, I imagine, in the whole wing of this great house. The wax lights on the dressing-table, and the unsnuffed dip with which the old housekeeper lit us through endless passages, leave all the corners dark. But the moonlight pours in through the vast, cage-like window. The moon is shining on a strip of sea above the tree-tops, and the noise of the sea is quite close; a noise quite unlike that of any running water, and methinks very melancholy and hopeless in expression. I tried to enjoy it like a play, or a romance which one reads; and indeed, the whole impression of this castle is marvellously romantic.