all round the house lay the thick soft deadening pall of snow that muffled the country from Thames to Severn. She wished that Lovel had not gone out; disheartened though she now was, she still clung to the tormenting comfort of his presence; it was almost a consolation to see him suffering beside her. Since life held neither hope nor joy for either of them, let her in her own pain at least be able to sneer at the sight of his; let them be together in their separation. She grew frightened at the wildness and virulence of her thoughts. They were not so much thoughts, as impulses that floated a little crazily across her mind. She was not well to-day; it was not surprising; it was cruel of Nicholas to leave her alone. She stirred, and looked round, saw no one, but fancied that eyes watched her. “Olver!” she cried out, although she had seen nothing. In a pause that followed her cry she breathed heavily, staring round with eyes that dared not flutter into a blink. Her eyeballs became tense and dry, her hands strained at the edge of the table. For all that she knew, her brother-in-law might have been in the room all the time; she was still startled by his soft appearances and vanishings, as by his sudden meaningless laughter, and by the arrows of shrewdness that would dart across his erratic brain. “Olver?” she whispered next, half-expecting him to answer from under her very feet, and little as she desired his company, she thought that any answer would be preferable to the continued silence in the room and to the doubt as to whether Olver was there or not. She was coming to the conclusion that her instinct had been a mistaken one, since five minutes had certainly elapsed while she stared and peered round the room, and she was about to relax from her strain of looking and listening for Olver, when she heard a faint tap on the window, and, looking round, she saw his face pressed against the window pane from outside. Her fright gave way to petulance; she called out to him to give over his tricks, and at the same time she beckoned imperiously to him to come into the house. Well-accustomed to him by now, she felt relief when he materialised out of the silence. “How long had you been watching me?” she asked. “That’s my secret,” he replied. She struggled, impatient of the little mysteries he liked to make. “Anyhow, Nicholas isn’t here,” she observed, turning away from Olver and tapping her fingers irritably upon the table. “I don’t want Nicholas,” said Olver, “I want you.” He came further into the room, while she looked at him in enquiry. “Oh, you’ve found an old bird’s nest you want to show me,” she said disdainfully. “That’s as far as you can think,” replied Olver with equal disdain. He came up to her. “Have you ever thought that there’s things you’ve no idea of going on all round you?” “Why,” she said, fright again overtaking her, “that’s what I was thinking just now.” “But you didn’t like to think too close on it?”