The fact was that the English winter was a terrible experience for Sir Gus. He had not contemplated anything so unlike all that he had previously known. He had heard of it, of course, and knew that there was cold to encounter such as he had never felt before, but he was not aware what were the consequences of that cold, either mental or bodily. He shrank visibly in the midst of his wrappings, and grew leaner and browner as the year went on, and sat shivering close by his great fire when the boys came in glowing with exercise, and the little girls, his favourites, with brilliant roses of winter on their cheeks. “Come out, come out, and you will get warm!” they all cried; but he would not leave his fire. A man more out of place in an English country-house in a severe winter could not be. Gus could do nothing that the other gentlemen did. He neither hunted nor shot, nor even walked or rode. He did not understand English law or customs, to occupy himself with the duties of a magistrate; he did not care about farming; he knew nothing about the preserving of the game, or even the care of the woods. He was fretful when the agent or his clerk came to consult him on any of these subjects. Go out and look at the timber! he only wanted more to burn, to have better and better fires. By this time the family at Markham had almost begun to forget that Gus was an intruder. There was no more question of Lady Markham’s removal to the dower-house. Nothing had been said about it by one or the other, but it had been quietly, practically laid aside, as a visionary scheme impossible in the circumstances. They all lived together calmly, monotonously, in perfect family understanding. Even Alice, who stood out so long against him, had learned to accept Gus. The little girls made him their slave; he was always ready to do anything they wanted, to take them wherever they pleased. But life got to be very heavy upon Gus’s hands as these winter days went on. He had nothing to do; he did not even read--that resource of the unoccupied; he had no letters to write, or business to do like his father, and he soon began to hate the library which had been appropriated to him, notwithstanding its huge fireplace. He was more at home in the soft brightness of the drawing-room, with velvet curtains drawn round him, and the lights reflected in the mirrors and sparkling on-the pretty china and ornaments. The ladies found him in their territories more than in his own. He interrupted nothing, but notwithstanding, there, as everywhere, there was nothing for him to do. It was only now and then, not once a day at the most, that there was a skein of silk or of wool to hold for some one. Sometimes he would volunteer to read aloud, but he soon tired of that. He bore this want of occupation very well on the whole, sitting buried in the big bamboo chair, which he had filled with soft cushions, at the corner of the fire in the drawing-room, looking on at all that was doing, and more