All the other young
ladies of the country had come, Adelaide Birkett one of the most
diligent in her attendance, for was not Edgar Harrowby one of the
most constant in his? But though more than one pair of eyes had looked
anxiously along the road that led to Ford House, which some people
still continued to call Andalusia Cottage, no lithe, graceful figure
had been seen gliding between the frosted hedgerows, and Edgar, like
Alick, had skated in disappointment, the former with the feeling of an
actor playing to an empty house when he made his finest turns and she
was not there to see them; the latter with the self-reproach of one
taking enjoyment abroad while the beloved is sitting in solitude and
dreariness at home.

At last, on the fourth day, she came down with her father; and to at
least two on the ground the advent of a slender-waisted girl with dark
eyes and small feet changed the whole aspect of things, and made life
for the moment infinitely more beautiful and desirable than it had
been. It was a brilliant day, with as fine a sun as England can show
in winter--no wind, but a clear air, crisp, dry and exhilarating,
Every one was there--Edgar, the most graceful of the skaters; Alick,
the most awkward; Dr. Corfield, essaying careful little spurts,
schoolboy fashion, along the edges; and the portly rector, proud
to show his past superiority in sharp criticism on the style of the
present day as a voucher for his own greater grace and skill in the
days when he too was an Adonis for the one part and an Admirable
Crichton for the other, and carried no superfluous flesh about his
ribs. Among them, too, looking on the scene as if it was something in
which he had no inherited share, as if these were not men and women to
whom he was sib on Adam's side, but cunningly contrived machines whose
movements he contemplated with benign indifference, was to be seen the
mild philosophic occupant of Lionnet--that Mr. Gryce of whom no one
knew more than that he studied dead languages through the day and
caught moths and beetles in the twilight, had come without letters of
introduction and was never seen at church; hence that he was a man of
whom to beware, and a dangerous element among them. The pendulum of
acceptance, which had swung so far on one side in the unguaranteed
reception of Madame de Montfort, had now gone back to the
corresponding extent on the other; and no one, not even Mr. Birkett as
the clergyman, nor Mr. Dundas as the