was with the air of a proprietress. Now, as we stopped 
the phaeton on the crest of the hill, she was silent 

Far away behind us lay the cold green of the 
eastern sky, and under it the smoke of London lay 
red and brown, while in the extreme  we 
could see dim traces of houses, and down in the 
south a faint rosy mist. Some glittering yeUow rays 
showed us where the Crystal Palace, lugh over the 
purple wordnetfear of Sydenham, caught the sunlight; 
and up by Notting Hill, too, there were one or two 
less cUstinct glimmerings of glass. But when we 
turned to the west, no such range of vision was per- 
mitted to us. All over the bed of the river there 
lay across the western sky a confused glare of pale 
geld  not a distinct sunset, with sharp lines of orange 
and blood-red , but a bewildering haze that blinded 
the eyes and was rather ominous for the morrow. 
Along the horizon, 

** where, enthroned in adamantine atate, 
Fkond of her hiffda, imperial Windsor sits," 



22 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES 

there was no trace of the grey towers to be made out 
but a confused and level mass of sil%'er ^treaks^ and 
lines of blue. Nearer at hand, the spacious and 
wooded landscape seemed almost dark