STRANGE’S horse had stood on a sharp stump hidden by the snow and had lamed himself, and they were both making the best of their way to the house. It was bad going, the fluttering snow kept constantly balling in Lorraine’s hoofs. Any attempt at hurry was out of the question, so Strange’s thoughts turned, as they always did in any unhurried moment, on his wife, and the puzzle they were both dissecting. “There is one thing,” he said with a laugh, “we are not likely to pall on one another in a hurry, there is nothing in the least mawkish in our relations, and we are both of us good-humoured. That half-amused malice in her radiant face whenever she catches me watching her!—Was there ever before such radiance in any woman’s face? This wife of mine is superb, and yet I haven’t an atom of claim to her, except from the law’s brutal point of view. But the mistake was mine, I thought it was in all women to be taught to love, given a decent education, but it seems there are some who want a special dispensation to get it driven into them. What a mystery the whole thing is! And you try to do your duty, my poor little girl, groping blindly in the cold outer air of ignorance, and you think I know nothing of your unrest and your wild endeavours! How little you know after all, with all your big brain! Hallo, there you are—yourself, on the top of the fence, with your hair flying! What hair it is! If you were anyone else,” he shouted, “I should see visions of colds and swollen noses; you can laugh and dare anything. Have you been long out?” She came up panting. “Since two o’clock. I had no idea I could be moved to enthusiasm for this part of the world. But this storm has rummaged out every latent spark in me. Look at those pines fighting the wind! Oh, oh, my hat!” “Hold Lorraine, I’ll catch it.” Gwen laughed gaily as she watched the chase. At first it was even betting between the two, but in the end Strange brought it back in triumph. “You can’t catch cold, but don’t you think the dignity of your position in the county demands a hat?” “If it wants a hat as disreputable as this to prop itself up with, it can’t be up to much! By the way, what a united couple the servants will think us, what a striking picture of easy affection!” Strange laughed, but his wife could have bitten out her tongue. After getting nearly frozen to the fence in her zeal to map out her duty, this to be the outcome of it all! She began to speak quickly, and her voice had a curious new little note in it that interested her husband, and made him turn his eyes on her more than once. But she was talking too fast to notice him, then she had the wind to fight. Besides all this, wild ideas of touches and such like began to float about her brain in rather a frantic way. She brought herself to reason with a shake, fortunately perhaps, the time being hardly fitting to launch out on any new line.