wing prospects ahead
opened her heart, not by nature a hard one, and happy in the character
of _grande dame_ and patron of the afflicted she went forth briskly on
her long walk at first. She reflected that her thirtieth birthday was
past, but that before a year had elapsed she would be firmly planted
abroad enjoying plenty of money, change of scene, and variety of
occupation, and even should Crabbe relapse, she saw herself rejuvenated
and strong in hope, capable of studying fresh parts beneath a new and
stimulating sky. Yet under these comforting reflections there lurked
an uneasy fear; the Clairville streak in her made her suspicious of her
present happiness, and as she perceived the well-known reddish gables
of her home, through the surrounding pines and snow, a qualm of unrest
shot through her. It was only a week since she had driven away with
Dr. Renaud, and here she was, again drawn by irresistible force towards
the detested Manor House of her fathers, now completely in the hands of
the Archambaults, with the giggling, despised Artemise and the
afflicted Angeel seated in possession, and this unrest, this fear, was
intimately concerned with the future and the fate of Ringfield.

She said to herself as if speaking to Miss Cordova:--

"You have not felt the force of that strong character pushing against
your own, nor the terrible grip of that hand-pressure, nor the
insistence of those caresses which hurt as well as delighted, so
different from the lazy, careless little appropriations of my present
lover,--pats and kisses he might give to a child."

Ringfield's arms had drawn her to him till she could have cried out
with fear, his eyes had shudderingly gazed into hers as if determined
to wrest any secret she possessed, his lips had pained her with the
fierce anger and despair of those two long kisses he had pressed upon
her own--how could she forget or belittle such wooing as that, so
different from Crabbe's leisurely, complacent courting! She neither
forgot nor underrated, but she had deliberately and cruelly left one
for the other, and deep in her heart she knew that something sinister,
something shocking and desperate, might yet befall, and what she feared
to hear was of Ringfield's suicide, for she fancied him capable of this
final act of self-pity and despair.

By the time she reached Clairville the sun was again shining and the
beauty of the glissade beginning to wane. Dark-haired Archambaults
flitted ab