of first
importance to all at Poussette's, but the Englishman's disdain of
explanations and Pauline's fine-lady air precluded much reference to
the matter; the minister could only accept the position.

And what was the position? Had not Miss Clairville given him a certain
soft and memorably tender answer, turning away all his jealous wrath;
and filling his soul with "Comfort and Joy, Comfort and Joy"? Had not
his lips pressed hers, his embrace enveloped her yielding form, her
eyes, melting and languorous, drooped before his fiery ones? Were
these things nothing to her, while to him they almost constituted a
marriage? Even with daily evidence of the strongest, he could not
bring himself to believe that she was anything but true.

Once they met in the wood, face to face, and there could be no excuse
on her part, no elegant evasion of the relations between them, as with
those chilling superior accents she persevered in ignoring the past.
Snow was again on the ground, every twig encased in a round tube of
glassy ice through which showed the grey, brown, or black stem, for a
wonderful glissade had followed the milder weather. The pendent
branches were freighted with soft, white tufts and cushions, and just
as Miss Clairville met Ringfield, under his heavier tread there broke a
large arm of larch stretched across the path. Thus he was compelled to
halt; the rebound and crash had sent snow flying all over her face and
clothes, and naturally he began to brush it off. She kept her hands in
her muff--the old one after all, for Crabbe's purchase had not yet
arrived--and regarded him, with some abatement, it is true, of the
aristocratic hauteur she wore so loftily at Poussette's, but still with
an air far removed from the intimate and sympathetic self she had
revealed in their first meetings.

"I believe you would have passed me!" said he bitterly, forcing that
raw and unpleasant smile. "If it had been a street, I mean, with
anyone about, or coming out of church! Surely nothing that has
happened can justify you in avoiding me like this!"

"Avoiding you?" She opened her large eyes in haughty incredulity.
"Why, I have been waiting for an opportunity like this to meet you and
talk it over! tell you something about myself, rather. What odd ideas
you get, _bizarre, mon ami_! Have you heard about my friend, Mr.
Hawtree?"

Ringfield answered unintelligibly, looking away from her.

"Have you not? Oh--you have! I thoug