CHAPTER XII
It was a warm, clear evening in late September, but autumn was no less evident in the quality of colour in the blue dome of the sky than in the spots and streaks of orange that had begun to flame among the green of the beech-trees and bracken that lay above and beyond the lake at Brayton. The paleness and coolness of that blue was reflected there; it was no midsummer sky that the lake mirrored, but the clearness of an evening which, though warm, might yet prove to be frosty before morning, and blacken the gay dahlia-heads, a little overbonneted, a little overcoiffured, that stood in stiff rows behind the audacious scarlet of the salvias in the formal garden-beds just outside the roofed terrace of the house. No sultriness of day-lit hours stained the heavens; a few little crimson wisps of cloud floated there, and were reflected below, as if the angel of sunset had moulted a score of downy feathers from his wings before plunging westward into the jubilance of the burning horizon. There some ribbons and patches of more substantial cloud of soberer hue floated like little windless, tropic islands on a sea of palest green; below them, and just above the pearl-coloured, half-opaque mists that hung over the valley where Brixham lay, a streak of intense orange burned along the hills.
The note of autumn, indeed, vibrated everywhere. A torrid August had scorched the lawn to a faded yellow, and already a fortnight ago the big, loose-leaved Virginia creeper on the house had burst into flame, and now only grey and brown ash remained to mark where that triumphant conflagration had flared. The big chestnut by the lake had yellowed, and in the cool of the sunset hour the large five-fingered leaves were detaching themselves, and falling without turn or twist in the still air on to the lawn beneath. Basket-chairs, some four or five in number, were placed in the trees' ample shade, and the seats of gaudy chintz
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