Our Lady of Darkness by Bernard Capes — Read

In Nicette's little lodge, doors and windows stood all open. Even then the languid air that entered fell fainting almost on the threshold. The heat of many preceding days seemed accumulated in vast bales of clouds piled up from the horizon. It scintillated, livid and coppery, through its enormous envelopes, eating its way forth with menace of a flood of fire.

Obviously the dairy was the nearest approach to a temperate zone, and thither Ned bent his steps, carrying his paint-box and canvas. He found the girl there, as he had expected. She was seated knitting near the flung casement, wherethrough came a hot scent of geranium flowers. In the blinding garden without silence panted like a drouthy dog. Only the horn, high on its perch, found breath to bemoan itself, gathering up the folds of muteness with an attenuated thread of complaint.