John's whole heart was set on one object. There is a Rubicon in the feelings to pass which is to cut off retreat. John had long passed it. "I cannot do two things at the same time," he said. "I will ask Mrs. Courtenay and Di here for the hunt ball, and settle matters one way or the other with Di. After that, whether I succeed or fail, I will throw myself heart and soul into the career Lord ---- prophesies for me. The general election comes on in the spring. I will stand then." John wrote a letter to the minister who had such a high opinion of him--or perhaps of his position--preserved a copy, pigeon-holed it, and put it from his mind. His thoughts reverted to Di as a matter of course. He had seen her several times since the fancy ball. Each particular of those meetings was noted down in the unwritten diary which contains all that is of interest in our lives, which no friend need be entreated to burn at our departure. He was aware that a subtle change had come about between him and Di; that they had touched new ground. If he had been in love before--which, of course, he ought to have been--he would have understood what that change meant. As it was, he did not. No doubt he would be wiser next time. Yet even John, creeping mole-like through self-made labyrinths of conjecture one inch below the surface, asked himself whether it was credible that Di was actually beginning to care for him. When he knew for certain she did not, there seemed no reason that she should not; now that he was insane enough to imagine she might, he was aware of a thousand deficiencies in himself which made it impossible. And yet---- So he wrote another letter, this time to Mrs. Courtenay, inviting her and Di to the hunt ball in his neighbourhood, at the end of January. And his invitation was accepted. And one if not two persons, perhaps even a third old enough to know better, began the unprofitable task of counting days. * * * * * It was an iron winter. It affected Fritz's health deleteriously. His short legs raised him but little above the surface of the earth, and he was subject to chills and cramps owing to the constant contact of the under portion of his long ginger person with the snow. Not that there was much snow. One steel and iron frost succeeded another. Lindo, on the contrary, found the cold slight compared with the two winters which he had passed in Russia with John. His wool had been allowed to grow, to the great relief of Mitty, who could not "abide" the "bare-backed state" which the exigencies of fashion required of him during the summer.