Mezzanine

The first of the autumn frosts had come, scenting the windless morning with its clean undefinable odour, and promising a radiant October day. When Elizabeth Langdon came down to breakfast the sun on this hill-top was already warm, and the air a-sparkle, though down below the cup-shaped hollow of the valley, where the town stood, was full to the brim of white mist. Level as a lake it stretched across the basin and along the course of the chalk stream, but it was fast drying up, and the tops of the trees in the Close and the Cathedral tower pierced it and rose above it, luminously gleaming in the pale sunshine.