es--there were phrases in it that a wounded suspicious heart might
misconstrue.... Yet Bessy's last words had absolved her.... Why had she
not answered them? Why had she stood there dumb? The blow to her pride
had been too deep, had been dealt too unexpectedly--for one miserable
moment she had thought first of herself! Ah, that importunate,
irrepressible self--the _moi haissable_ of the Christian--if only one
could tear it from one's breast! She had missed an opportunity--her last
opportunity perhaps! By this time, even, a hundred hostile influences,
cold whispers of vanity, of selfishness, of worldly pride, might have
drawn their freezing ring about Bessy's heart....

Justine started up to follow her...then paused, recalling her last
words. "Let us not talk now--I can't!" She had no right to intrude on
that bleeding privacy--if the chance had been hers she had lost it. She
dropped back into her seat at the desk, hiding her face in her hands.

Presently she heard the clock strike, and true to her tireless instinct
of activity, she lifted her head, took up her pen, and went on with the
correspondence she had dropped.... It was hard at first to collect her
thoughts, or even to summon to her pen the conventional phrases that
sufficed for most of the notes. Groping for a word, she pushed aside her
writing and stared out at the sallow frozen landscape framed by the
window at which she sat. The sleet had ceased, and hollows of sunless
blue showed through the driving wind-clouds. A hard sky and a hard
ground--frost-bound ringing earth under rigid ice-mailed trees.

As Justine looked out, shivering a little, she saw a woman's figure
riding down the avenue toward the gate. The figure disappeared behind a
clump of evergreens--showed again farther down, through the boughs of a
skeleton beech--and revealed itself in the next open space as
Bessy--Bessy in the saddle on a day of glaring frost, when no horse
could keep his footing out of a walk!

Justine went to the window and strained her eyes for a confirming
glimpse. Yes--it was Bessy! There was no mistaking that light flexible
figure, every line swaying true to the beat of the horse's stride. But
Justine remembered that Bessy had not meant to ride--had countermanded
her horse because of the bad going.... Well, she was a perfect
horsewoman and had no doubt chosen her surest-footed mount...probably
the brown cob, Tony Lumpkin.

But when did Tony's sides shine so bright through t