There were a few men in the lounge, hidden behind papers; a few men in the card-room, which was blue with smoke and close and distasteful after the open air of the country. He found his room gloomy and himself restless. His loneliness was turning to bitterness to-night. Changing his rough clothes for others he went out again. Dick had lived in Carrington too long not to know where every sort of person sought his diversions. In twenty minutes he had found the group whose usual form of amusement he felt might fill the night for him. They were gathered, as he had guessed they would be, in the room of one of the men, with plenty of liquor and plenty of cards and a welcome for him. It was some years since he had joined this crowd, but once in it he felt natural enough, and the depression which had been bothering him was gone before long. CHAPTER XXV Winter came early that year. Even in November the cold was steady and relentless. Cecily felt her isolation more as she was shut up with her children in the house, except for their periods of exercise. She dreaded the winter, especially the approach of Christmas, and the long winter evenings, which seemed so endless after the children were abed, dragged wearily--reading and reading, learning things, thinking things which her limited activities gave her no chance to put into practice. She had passed the point where she was in agony about her own troubles. Every book, every newspaper told her of tragedies much worse. And resolutely she tried not to think of Dick, although the news of him filtered through to her now and then. Some one had sent her a marked newspaper, the kind of paper to which she had no ordinary access, reeking with gossip and scandal. She did not want to read it, but of course she did, and in the smirking, veiled allusions, all nameless, she gathered that her story had filtered through to the public. She heard through Della that Dick was “going a pace.” She knew from the daily papers that he must be having trouble in the mining country. The winter had come early there, too, and the price of food and fuel had soared, fanning into a flame of irritation the discontents which were always smoldering. There were petty strikes already, with the threat of a big one hanging fire all the time. Cecily wondered how Dick was going to tackle all these problems with Matthew away, especially if he were not living well. It surprised her to find that the personal rancor at the intimations of Dick’s wildness did not arise. What she felt was rather this vague uninformed worry about his ability to handle these big affairs if he were in bad shape. She knew that he and Matthew were rich themselves, but that they had no great standing in comparison with the great financiers of the country who had tied up enormous sums of money in these mining ranges. Her stepfather told her that Dick had his hands full. She hated to ask further, telling herself that she had deliberately made it none of her business.