her
most English, and therefore haughtiest manner. "But I myself have had
the same intention. We can work together, I suppose!"

"No, I prefer that you leave this to me."

To this she replied sneeringly, and a new cause of recrimination ensued.

Pauline rose abruptly from the snowy mound and walked to the road,
Ringfield following her, and they did not know that never again on this
earth and during this life would they meet thus--part thus--alone, with
full opportunity to say what they thought, what they wished.

Sadness fell on both as they shortly went different ways, but whereas
the lively nature of one was soon occupied gaily at Poussette's with
fresh purchases to look at and approve, in the other grief was
succeeded by a gathering of all his forces, as he mentally resolved
(swore, to rightly translate his indomitable mood) to prevent the
marriage. For this was what he had arrived at; nothing more nor less,
and how it might be done haunted him continually as he walked by night
on the frozen road, or sat at meals within sound of Crabbe's cynical
and lettered humour, and within sight of Pauline's white hands on which
gleamed a couple of new and handsome rings.

She must not marry him! That became the burden of his thought, and the
time-limit of three weeks, bringing it to Christmas Eve, was to him as
the month before execution of the condemned criminal.

She must not marry him! What then, could or in all likelihood would,
prevent this consummation? The hours flew by and he thought of no
plan. The hard weather still held and grew harder, colder, until the
great drifts blocked all the roads, and St. Ignace was cut off from the
outside world. Still, any hour a thaw might set in and, at the worst,
the railway was hardly ever impracticable for more than a couple of
days. Delay there might be, but one could see that Crabbe would not
refuse to welcome even delay; he sat at the head of the chief table
clad in the regulation tweeds of the country gentleman, and with a kind
of fierce and domineering inflation in his manner that subdued the
irrepressible hilarity of Poussette, threatening to break out again,
for by way of keeping his pledge as to liquor, he seemed to take more
beer than was necessary or good for him. The Cordova, held as a
willing witness and prospective bridesmaid, had to "learn her place"
under the new _regime_, and felt fully as miserable as she looked, for
now no longer revelry graced the ni