But how these decisions melted when, in the heart of the winter, there began to dawn the promise of the New Year, it is easy to imagine, and I do not need to say. Lily, it must be remembered, had no one but Ronald to represent to her happiness and life. She had never had many people to love. Her father and mother had both died before she was old enough to know them. She had no aunt, though that is often an unsatisfactory relation, not even cousins whom she knew, which is strange to think of in Scotland--nobody to take her part or whom she could repose her heart upon but Beenie, her maid, to whom Lily’s concerns were her own sublimated, and who could only agree in and intensify Lily’s own natural impulses and thoughts. Ronald was all she had, the only one who could help her, the sole deliverer possible, and opener to her of the gates of life. To be sure, she might have renounced him and so returned to her uncle, to be dragged about in a back seat of his chariot, if not at its wheels; though, indeed, even this was problematical, for Sir Robert was a selfish old man, who was, on the whole, very glad to have got rid of the burden of a young woman to take about with him, and considered that she would do very well at the old Tower, and might be quite content with such a quiet and comfortable home, a good cook (which Katrin was), a pony to ride upon, and the run of the moor. He had half forgotten her existence by this time, as Lily divined, and was absent “abroad” in that vague and wide world of which stayers at home in Scotland knew so much less then than every-body knows now. And as the time approached for Ronald’s return, Lily, in her longing for him, added to her longing for something, for some one, for society, emancipation, something that was life, began to forget all her old aches and troubles of mind; the doubts flew away; she remembered only that Ronald was coming, that he was coming, that the sun was about to shine again, that there was happiness in prospect, love and company and talk and sympathy, and all that is good in youth and life. This time she must manage so that the deceit of old would be necessary no longer. Helen should know that the two who had met so often in the Manse parlor had come to love each other. What so natural, what so fitting, seeing they had spent so much time together under her own wing and her own mild eyes? And Katrin and Dougal should be permitted to see what Lily was very sure they had divined already, that the poor gentleman whom Lily had nursed so faithfully was more to her than any other gentleman in the world. He should come to Dalrugas to see her, and be with her openly as her lover in the sight of all men. If Sir Robert heard of it, why, then she must escape, she must fly; the pair must at last take it, as Ronald had said, into their own hands--and Lily did not feel that she would be very sorry if this took place. At all events now every thing should be open and honest, clandestine no more.