ir' painfully
perceptible in the shade.

'I feel roasted and frozen at once; don't you, Clayton?' said Jacinth
laughingly, as they crossed the road to get into the warmth, such as it
was, again.

'Yes, indeed, Miss Mildmay,' the maid agreed. 'It's a day when you need
both a parasol and a muff together. For there is such a glare.'

A glare there was, truly. Snow had been falling now and then during the
last day or two, and though but in light and short showers, the ground
was sufficiently frozen for it to 'lie;' so that the sunshine, not
powerful enough to melt it, save here and there very superficially, was
reflected from the gleaming surface with extraordinary brilliancy.

'We really should have snow spectacles,' Jacinth was saying, when a
sudden shock made her aware that in her dazzled state she had run foul
of some one or something standing on the pathway just in front of her.

'I beg your pardon,' she exclaimed instinctively, and the stranger
turning sharply--for she had been looking in the forward
direction--almost at the same moment made the same apology, adding
quickly, when she heard Jacinth's English voice, 'I should not be
blocking up the'----But her sentence was never completed. 'Oh, can it be
you? Jacinth--Jacinth Mildmay? Is Frances here? Oh, how
delightful.--Camilla,' as an older girl came across the road in her
direction, 'Camilla, just fancy--this is Jacinth. I can scarcely believe
it,' and before Jacinth had had time to say a word, she felt two
clinging arms thrown round her neck, and kisses pressed on her burning
cheeks, by the sweet, loving lips of Bessie Harper.

The blood had rushed to Jacinth's face in a torrent, and for a moment
she almost gasped for breath.

'Bessie, Bessie dear, you are such a whirlwind. You have startled Miss
Mildmay terribly.'

'I am so sorry,' said Bessie penitently, and then at last Jacinth was
able to answer the girl's inquiries, and explain how it had come about
that she alone of her family was here so far from home.

'And are _you_ all here?' she asked in return.

'Yes,' Miss Harper answered, 'all of us except my eldest brother. The
two others are here temporarily; the little one who is going into the
navy got his Christmas holidays, and the other has his long leave just
now. And my father is so wonderfully better; you heard, you saw Bessie's
letter to Frances?' and Camilla's face grew rosy in its turn.

'Oh yes,' Jacinth replied. 'We were very, very glad. Fr