The first quiet stolen interview of Clare and Trevor Chute was one of inexpressible happiness and joy. They were again in the recess of that oriel near which he had first said he loved her, and she had accepted him. The moon shone as bright now as then, but in the clear and frosty sky of a winter night, and the flakes of light threw down many a crimson, golden, and blue ray of colour on the snowy skin and white dress of Clare, as she nestled her face on Trevor's breast, while his arm went round her. Clare loved well the woods of the old Court--the lovely, leafy woods--with trees round and vast as the pillars of a Saxon cathedral--loved them in their vernal greenery, their summer foliage, and their varied autumnal tints of russet, brown, and gold, for there had Trevor told her again and again the old, old story, the story of both their hearts, hand locked in hand; and there she had first learned how sweet and good our earthly life may be, how full of hope, of sunshine, and glory to the loving and the loved; but never did she love them as when she saw them now, though standing black and leafless amid the far-stretching waste of snow that gleamed in the distance far away under the glare of the moon, for Trevor was with her once more, and never to be separated from her again! 'Oh, Trevor, Trevor! I thank kind Heaven,' she whispered for the twentieth time, 'that you and papa are friends now--and such friends! Lady Evelyn has told me again and again all the debt we owe. If the poor old man had perished----' 'Had I saved a nation, Clare, my reward is in you,' said he, arresting effectually further thanks or praises. He had dreamed by day of Clare, and loved her as much as ever man loved woman; he had undergone all the misery of separation, of hopelessness, doubt, and even of groundless jealousy; and now, after all, she was his own! For the most tranquil time of all his past life he would not have exchanged the tumultuous and brilliant joy of the present; yet that joy was not without a cloud, and that cloud was the regret and perplexity caused by Ida, for whom he had all the tenderness of a brother. On the day after his arrival he was writing in the library, and had been so for some time, before he discovered that Ida was lying fast asleep in an easy-chair near the fire, her slumber being induced either by weariness and languor, or the cosy heat of the room, with its warmth of colour and its heavy draperies, which partly hid the snowy scene without. For a few moments he watched the singular beauty of the girl's upturned face, the purity of her profile, and the sweetness of her parted lips, as her graceful head reclined against the back of the softly cushioned chair, over which, as they had become undone, bright masses of her auburn hair were rippling.