Constance snatched her cloak and ran out by the other door to escape seeing the doctor again and hearing her stepmother dilate to him upon the night's events. The sun was rising, resplendent, but the air was cold. "And no wonder!" Constance thought, startled by her discovery. "Winter is upon us; to-day is December! Our warmth must leave us, and then will danger of poisoning be past, even in sheltered spots, such as that in which our little lass near found her death!" She spread her arms out to the sun rays, and let the crisp, sea wind cool her face. "What a world! What a world! How fair, how glad, how sweet! Oh, thank God that it is so to us all this morning! Never will I repine at hardships in kind Plymouth colony, nor at the cost of coming on this pilgrimage, for of all the world in Merry England there is none to-day happier or more grateful than is this pilgrim maid!" CHAPTER XVIII Christmas Wins, Though Outlawed Little Damaris, who had so nearly made the last great pilgrimage upon which we must all go, having turned her face once more toward the world she had been quitting, resumed her place in it but languidly. Never a robust child, her slender strength was impaired by the poison which she had absorbed. Added to this was the sudden coming of winter upon Plymouth, not well prepared to resist it, and it set in with violence, as if to atone for dallying on its way, for allowing summer to overlap its domain. Without a word to each other both Dame Eliza and Constance entered into an alliance of self-denial, doing without part of the more nourishing food out of their scanty allowance to give it to Damaris, and to plot in other ways to bring her back to health. Constance scarcely knew her stepmother. Silent, where she had been prone to talk; patient, where she had been easily vexed; with something almost deprecatory in her manner where she always had been self-assertive, Dame Eliza went about her round of work like a person whom her husband's daughter had never known. Toward Constance most of all was she changed. Never by the most remote implication did she blame her, whereas heretofore everything that the girl did was wrong, and the subject of wearisome, scolding comment. She avoided unnecessary speech to Constance, seemed even to try not to look at her, but this without the effect of her old-time dislike; it was rather as if she felt humiliated before her, and could not bring herself to meet the girl's eyes. Constance, as she realized this, began to make little overtures toward her stepmother. Her sweetness of nature made her suffer discomfort when another was ill-at-ease, but so far her cautious attempts had met with failure. "We have been in Plymouth a year, lacking but a sen' Night, Stepmother," Constance said one December day when the snow lay white on Plymouth and still thickened the air and veiled the sky. "And we have been in the New World past a year."