It was, indeed. The hills lay so still, so soft beneath the pale-blue wintry sky, the distant ones greyly transparent, the near ones showing rounded, red-brown bracken-covered lights against rounded, misty, violet shadows. The very frost rime on each leaf, each blade of grass, looked soft, and the gold of the slanting sunlight seemed to warm the very icicles which drooped from the high moss-covered, fern-clad banks showing where some trickle of water dropped from the hillside above. But it was up the wooded ravines where the bare branches of the oak scrub followed each curving contour that the ineffable hues of blent shadows and shine showed to their fullest. They were valleys of perfect rest, deep blue in their depths, jasper, jewelled with crystals on their heights. The footsteps of the two echoed sharply among the rocks. Their shadows, blent into one, preceded them. Yet the thought of both went further ahead still. There were no flowers now, but the brambles dead-green and russet and gold, still thrust out withered fruit-branches across their path. The leafless trees gave clearer vision now. They could see across the stream. There was the garden, the lawn, and on it, by heaven, reaching down red holly-berries from an old tree was a figure in white--Aura herself! Ned gave a view holloa. She turned round, waved one hand, then dropping her berries waved both. The thought of the long round by the rhododendrons and the drawbridge was too much for them. The parapet was low, the stream lower still. In a moment they were over it, and racing to meet her like a couple of schoolboys. She laughed to see them, holding out both hands. "What a hurry you are in," she cried. "So you have both come. Grandfather said you wouldn't, but Martha and I thought it wiser to get the two rooms ready--and I was right!" Her welcome disarmed rivalry, and gave both the young men a desire to fall at her feet and kiss the hem of her garment. But they repressed it. "Of course we have both come!" replied Ned imperturbably. "Are we not the inseparable two-headed, four-armed, four-legged monster, Edward Cruttenden? don't interrupt me, Ted, I am coming to that by and by. Only Miss--Miss--do you know I don't happen to know your surname. Is it Smith?" She shook her head with a smile. "Graham--but every one calls me Aura." "Miss Aura," went on Ned doubtfully. She looked at him and her eyes twinkled. "Put on the H, please, if you are going to speak like Martha. Only it sounds better without any prefix." For some reason or other both the young men found themselves blushing and their hearts beating. "Much nicer," assented Ted with fervour; but Ned made an elision. "I was going to tell you that in addition to Edward Cruttenden I have--for my sins--to answer to another name--Lord Blackborough." She stared and frowned. "You mean," she said slowly, "that as they put it in the books you are Edward Cruttenden, Lord Blackborough?"