This was about a week before Christmas. It gave promise of being a hard one, for a slight sprinkling, more of frost than snow, lay on the roads, and the horses' roughened hoofs echoed cheerfully through the keen air. It was exhilarating, Helen felt, after those long months at the hospital broken only by dull constitutionals. She had begun these by setting her face always to the country; but after a time the long rows of workmen's houses, the dreary muddiness of gravel side-walkings, the intolerable admixture of bricks and bakers' carts had driven her back to wander aimlessly through crowded streets. There she could at any rate see civilisation, pure and undefiled by attempts after the Garden of Eden! So this was joy. The hedgerows were black with unutterable soot, the sky was grey with smoke, but the birds were twittering among the smutty hips and haws, and overhead a flight of cawing rooks made the grey seem light by their blackness. She looked round for sympathy to Ned, and was struck by his face. "You're looking awfully well, Ned," she remarked; "What have you been doing to yourself? You look a perfect boy." He laughed. "Having a good time. I found an old man--but that passes. Meanwhile I expect I shall require some healthful calm. My manager tells me the business has been going to pot since I've been away. I shall have to interfere myself, I expect, but that won't be till after Christmas. How's Ramsay getting on?" Helen looked a trifle stiff. "You had better ask him yourself, you will see him when you drive me back; I only know that he has resigned his appointment." "So he wrote me. Had a row apparently with the Governing Body--that was ill advised." "Very," said Helen coolly, "but then Dr. Ramsay has no tact, and is a very obstinate person. Is that New Park? You know I have never been here before." Ned Blackborough shot a faintly amused glance at her. "It is New Park. Did you ever see an inheritance more calculated to make a man cut his throat?" It was indeed unexpressibly dreary in its long pompous façade of regularly recessed windows, each with its sham pilasters and heavy entablature. "It always seems as if it had a sick headache, and it gives me one to look at it. It's a fact," added Ned, as Helen laughed. "It is positively more hideous than--than the Sea View Hotel. I hear, by the way, they have rebuilt that. Have you heard anything more of Hirsch since then?" Helen gave a fine flush. "He comes down to Blackborough on business. And I have seen him. He is really frightfully distressed because I will not let him pay back that money. Last time he nearly wept." "He wept because he could not understand," paraphrased Ned. "It is not his fault. It is astonishing how little sense of abstract justice and fairness people have as a rule. They're so set on mercy and loving-kindness that they forget the eye-for-an-eye, the tooth-for-a-tooth ideal. Well, here we are. The house is not quite so bad inside, but it is pretty awful."