For miles and miles, on every side but the west, lay stretched before her a beautifully broken country. The November haze hung over it now like a thin veil, giving great sweetness and softness to the scene. Far in the distance a range of low hills showed like a misty cloud; near by, at the mountain's foot, the fields and farmhouses and roads lay, a pictured map. About a mile and a half to the south, rose the mountain where Nancy Vawse lived, craggy and bare; but the leafless trees, and stern, jagged rocks were wrapped in the haze; and through this the sun, now near the setting, threw his mellowing rays, touching every slope and ridge with a rich, warm glow.
Poor Ellen did not heed the picturesque effect of all this, yet the sweet influences of nature reached her, and softened while they increased her sorrow. She felt her own heart sadly out of tune with the peace and loveliness of all she saw. Her eye sought those distant hills how very far off they were! and yet all that wide tract of country was but a little piece of what lay between her and her mother. Her eye sought those hills but her mind overpassed them, and went far beyond, over many such a tract, till it reached the loved one at last. "But, oh! how much between! I cannot reach her she cannot reach me!" thought poor Ellen. Her eyes had been filling and dropping tears for some time, but now came the rush of the pent-up storm, and the floods of grief were kept back no longer.
When once fairly excited, Ellen's passions were always extreme. During the former peaceful and happy part of her life, the occasions of such excitement had been very rare. Of late, unhappily, they had occurred much oftener. Many were the bitter fits of tears she had known within a few weeks. But now it seemed as if all the scattered causes of sorrow that had wrought those tears were gathered together, and pressing upon her at once, and that the burden would crush her to the earth. To the earth it brought her, literally. She slid from her seat at first, and, embracing the stone on which she had sat, she leaned her head there; but presently in her agony quitting her hold of that, she cast herself down upon the moss, lying at full length upon the cold ground, which seemed, to her childish fancy the best friend she had left. But Ellen was wrought up to the last pitch of grief and passion. Tears brought no relief. Convulsive weeping only exhausted her. In the extremity of her distress and despair, and in that lonely place, out of hearing of every one, she sobbed aloud, and even screamed, for almost the first time in her life; and these fits of violence were succeeded by exhaustion, during which she ceased to shed tears, and lay quite still, drawing only long, sobbing sighs, now and then.