I have said that no one save Miss India realized it, but that is not wholly true. For Holly herself realized it in a dim, disquieting way. The world in which she had spent her first eighteen years seemed, as she looked back at it, strangely removed from the present one. There had been the same sky and sunshine, the same breezes and flowers, the same pleasures and duties, and yet there had been a difference. It was as though a gauze curtain had been rolled away; things were more distinct, sensations more acute; the horizon was where it always had been, but now it seemed far more distant, giving space for so many details which had eluded her sight before. It was all rather confusing. At times it seemed to Holly that she was much happier than she had been in that old world, and there were times when the contrary seemed true, times when she became oppressed with a feeling of sorrowfulness. At such moments her soft mouth would droop at the corners and her eyes grow moist; life seemed very tragic in some indefinable way. And yet, all the while, she knew in her heart that this new world――this broader, vaster, clearer world――was the best; that this new life, in spite of its tragedy which she felt but could not see, was the real life. Sorrow bit sharper, joy was more intense, living held a new, fierce zest. Not that she spent much time in introspection, or worried her head with over-much reasoning, but all this she felt confusedly as one groping in a dark room feels unfamiliar objects without knowing what they may be or why they are there. But Holly’s groping was not for long. The door of understanding opened very suddenly, and the light of knowledge flooded in upon her. [Illustration] January was a fortnight old and Winter held sway. The banana-trees drooped blackened and shrivelled, the rose-beds were littered with crumpled leaves, and morning after morning a film of ice, no thicker than a sheet of paper, but still real ice, covered the water-pail on its shelf on the back porch. Uncle Ran groaned with rheumatism as he laid the morning fires, and held his stiffened fingers to the blaze as the fat pine hissed and spluttered. To Winthrop it was the veriest farce of a winter, but the other inhabitants of Waynewood felt the cold keenly. Aunt India kept to her room a great deal, and when she did appear down-stairs she seemed tinier than ever under the great gray shawl. Her face wore a pinched and anxious expression, as though she were in constant fear of actually freezing to death. “I don’t understand what has gotten into our winters,” she said one day at dinner, drawing her skirts forward so they would not be scorched by the fire which blazed furiously at her back. “They used to be at least temperate. Now one might as well live in Russia or Nova Zembla! Phœbe, you forgot to put the butter on the hearth and it’s as hard as a rock. You’re getting more forgetful every day.” [Illustration]