The wind had dropped to a fresh breeze, scented by the damp mossy smell of gardens soaked by rain. It was a smell loaded with nostalgia, and for once Penelope found herself caught off-guard, and was suffused with a mindless ecstasy that she had not known since she was a child. She thought of the last couple of years, the boredom, the narrowness of existence, the dearth of anything to look forward to. Yet now, in a single instant, the curtains had been whipped aside, and the windows beyond thrown open onto a brilliant view that had been there, waiting for her, all the time. A view, moreover,
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