Norma yielded to their persuasions, feeling a little curiously, but hardening her heart. What she had come to say, she intended to say; but it would be best to wait an opportunity. She let Berkeley take her wraps, and established herself comfortably, bent on making the time pass pleasantly, and herself thoroughly agreeable. The meal was a merry one, for Norma exerted herself unusually, and was ably seconded by Pocahontas, who, for some reason, appeared in brilliant spirits. After tea they discovered that it was snowing heavily. The threatened storm had come--evenly, slowly, in a thick, impenetrable cloud, the white flakes fell, without haste, excitement or the flurry of wind. Already the ground was covered and the trees were bending with the weight of the white garment the sky was throwing over them. It was unfit weather for a lady to encounter, or indeed for anything feminine to be abroad in, save a witch on a broomstick. Norma was fain to accept Mrs. Mason's invitation and remain for the night at Lanarth. When the two girls, in dressing gowns and slippers, sat over the fire in Pocahontas's room, brushing out their long hair, Norma found the opportunity for which she had lain in wait the entire evening. It was the hour for confidences, the house was quiet, the inmates all dispersed to their several couches. Norma, brush in hand and hair flowing in a heavy, black veil around her, had quitted her own room across the passage, and established herself in a low rocking-chair beside Pocahontas's bright fire. She was far too clever a diplomatist to introduce her subject hastily; she approached it gradually from long range--stalked it delicately with skillful avoidance of surprise or bungling. The game must be brought down; on that she was determined; but there should be no bludgeon blows, no awkward carnage. The death-stab should be given clean, with scientific skill and swiftness, and the blow once given, she would retire to her own room and let her victim find what solace she could in solitude. Norma was not wantonly cruel; she could impale a foe, but she had no desire to witness his contortions. After a death-scene she shrank from the grewsomeness of burial; she preferred a decent drop-curtain and the grateful darkness.