Commissioned to illumine the murk wilderness around her with the glow of her Christian loveliness and faith, Nature had touched her with inspirations of refinement, with a culture as unconscious as the growing of the grass, and the clear intuitions of a spiritual life full of heaven-born inclinations.

Far south rises a murk of sand against the sky; it grows, the wind shakes itself, and has a smell of earth.

On her granddaughter's brow Madame Valcour saw the murk of the storm.