Following closely built, winding streets, noticing with an eager and unaccountable interest little things--a thrush in a wicker cage, a woman knitting in a doorway, a child playing with a white rabbit, a girl leaning from a window watering a pot of wallflowers--asking a direction once in a small baker's shop, and again of a chair-mender installed at the corner of a street, the Countess Lavinia found her way to the Thames. The great river lay in a silver sullenness beneath the clear dome of the sky; its ceaseless ripples were outlined in threads of gold; gold shimmered in the sails of the brown boats floating by, and on the roofs of the houses on the Southwark side. The Countess found it beautiful beyond anything she had imagined; an air of gay peace lay over it all, an atmosphere of pure contentment. Where the bank sloped to the water a couple of plane trees grew, shaking their dusty summer foliage against the fading blue; the Countess crossed, stood beneath them and looked along the reaches of the river. She thought of people who had drowned themselves in these waters, and tried to imagine the sensation of sinking beneath the sunset ripples. A party of young apprentices came by, unmoored a boat, and went off down the river to the sound of laughter and the splash of oars, but they looked at her, and the manner of it reminded her of her appearance and the likelihood of causing comment; she wore a thin muslin dress and a red silk mantle, her hair hung in powdered curls under her wide straw hat, and she carried a useless parasol. An unusual figure for this neighbourhood at this hour, and one that could not long go unquestioned. Becoming conscious of the observation of the few passers-by, she moved along the bank in the direction of the Abbey of Westminster. The sun sank and the gold died swiftly from land and water; a little wind rose and clouds began to obscure the sky. The Countess shivered in her light clothing, and the exaltation in her freedom died as swiftly as it had come; she was aware only that she was lonely, unprotected, that she had missed her way and must find it, must find Marius. As her thoughts dwelt on him, the old sore, passions that always accompanied her unnameable feeling for my lord's brother, sprang to life--hatred of her husband, of her father, bitter desire to be avenged, to pull them all down. She moved on quickly. For all the chilling wind she shuddered with a sense of inward heat, and giddiness now and then clouded her vision. She remembered that she had been ill last night, that she had not slept at all, and a horrible fear of sudden death possessed her; she recalled tales of people dying without warning--in the street, at the table. She hurried on. The clouds had silently and swiftly covered the sky. As she turned into the square by the Parliament House dusk had overspread the city, and a few drops of rain began to fall. Beneath the Abbey towers she paused, bewildered.