Time wore on, summer merged into autumn, and still Anne had never spoken once to Meadowes about Sebastian Shepley; they were the best of friends, Anne welcomed his coming and mourned at his going, but without a trace of sentiment, as Meadowes found himself forced to admit. Men do not like a want of sentiment in women: they may condone it in their own sex, it is considered an essential in ours; so Meadowes, who had never blamed himself for lacking this quality, found it in his heart to be surprised and a little indignant with Anne for doing so. ‘She should be beginning to care more for me by now,’ he thought; he had been a very devoted husband. It was devotion indeed, which urged him to ride out from London one cruel night of wind and rain. The miles seemed as though they would never be got over; yet Meadowes rode on and on, out into the deep country, his head bowed before the lashing of the rain and the onslaught of the wind. At the Cross Roads Inn he dismounted, and leaving his horse there, strode on through the darkness to Anne’s cottage. ‘Good sakes, Dick, is it you!’ cried Anne at sound of his knock. She flung open the door and he passed in, into the warmth and stillness of the cottage kitchen, where he stood laughing and breathless, the water dripping from his drenched clothes on to the sanded floor. Anne, exclamatory and sympathetic, stood beside him. ‘’Tis wetted through and through you are, Dick,’ she said, wringing the flap of his riding-coat. ‘For the love of heaven go and cast these wet clothes from off you, while I do heat up some ale for you on the fire. There be naught like hot ale for chills. Good lack! to think of mortal man riding from London this night!’ Meadowes laughed. ‘I shall be none the worse, Anne. But not hot ale—mulled claret for me, my girl.’ ‘I have no knowledge of your fine sour-wine drinks, Dick. For certain the hot ale be far wholesomer,’ urged Anne, who clung to tradition as surely as Meadowes. So to please her hot ale he drank, sitting by the wide cottage fireplace listening to the driving storm. The candle, which had been low in its socket, burned lower; then Anne put it out, and still they sat silently in the pleasant fire-lit room and heard the storm rave on outside. They were sitting side by side on the settle by the fire, Meadowes had his arm round Anne’s shoulder in his kindly caressing fashion, but though Anne permitted the endearment she did not respond to it in any way. ‘You are very quiet to-night?’ said Meadowes at last. Anne shivered, and bent forward to stir up the fire for answer. ‘What ails you, Anne? Has aught distressed you through the day?’ he asked. Anne turned round and looked at him; her eyes had a curiously wild, frightened expression. ‘’Tis like great guns,’ she said. ‘There, there. O Lord, I can’t a-bear to hear it—guns and guns a-thundering on, and when it cometh round the corner o’ the house ’tis for all the world like the shrieks of dying men.’