The Last of the Line

It was on a tranquil evening, in the sweet summer month of June, that a lady of no ordinary appearance sat at an open casement of many-coloured glass, and overlooked a wild, but singularly beautiful, country. From the window, a flight of steep stone steps led to a narrow terrace, that, in former times, had been carefully guarded by high parapets of rudely-carved granite; but they had fallen to decay, and lay in mouldering heaps on the shrubby bank, which ran almost perpendicularly to a rapid stream that danced like a sunny spirit through the green meadows, dotted and animated with sheep and their sportive lambs. In the distance, rude and rugged mountains towered in native dignity, "high in air," ¹⁵⁰ their grim and sterile appearance forming an extraordinary, but not unpleasing, contrast to the pure and happy-looking valley at their base, where, however, a few dingy peasant-cottages lay thinly scattered, injuring, rather than enlivening, a scene that nature had done much to adorn, and man nothing to preserve. Half way up the nearest mountain, a little chapel, dedicated to "our Lady of Grace," ¹⁵¹ hung, like a wren's nest, on what seemed a point of rock; but even its rustic cross was invisible from the antique casement. Often and anxiously did the lady watch the distant figures who trod the hill-side towards the holy place, to perform some act of penance or devotion.