There was a rapid thaw on the following morning, so Harrington rode the black over to the Mount in the twilight after office hours, a liberty which that high-bred animal resented by taking fright at every doubtful object in the long leafless avenue beyond the Roman Amphitheatre. Trifles which would have been light as air to him, jogging homeward in company after a long day’s hunting, assumed awful and ghostly aspects under the combined influences of solitude and want of work. The twilight ride to the Mount was in fact a series of hairbreadth escapes, and it would have needed a stronger stimulant than the Dowager’s wishy-washy tea to restore Mr. Dalbrook’s physical balance, if his mental balance had not been so thoroughly unhinged as to make him half unconscious of physical discomfort. “You look awfully seedy,” said Juliet, as she poured out tea from a pot that had been standing nearly half an hour. The Dowager had retired to her own den, where she occupied a great portion of her life in writing prosy letters to her relatives and connections of all degrees; but as she never sent them anything else, this was her only way of maintaining the glow of family feeling. “The black nearly pulled my fingers off,” replied Harrington. “I never knew him so fresh.” “You should have taken it out of him on the downs,” answered Juliet, rather contemptuously. “The grass is all right after the thaw. Have you brought me what you so kindly promised?” He took a sealed envelope out of his breast-pocket and handed it to her. “Is this the fifty? How quite too good of you!” she cried, pocketing it hastily. “You don’t know what a difficulty you have got me out of; but I’m afraid I may have inconvenienced you.” This was evidently an afterthought. “‘Being your slave, what should I do but tend upon the hours and times of your desire?’” quoted Harrington, with a sentimental air. “How sweet!” exclaimed Juliet, really touched by his affection; yet she would rather he had told her that fifty pounds was a sum of no consequence, and that so small a loan involved no inconvenience for him. “I’m afraid his father can hardly be as rich as people think,” she said to herself, while Harrington relaxed his strained muscles before the fire. “How I wish you were not going to Medlow!” he said presently. “So do I; but I can’t possibly get out of it, and then it’s a blessed escape to get away from here.” “Do you really dislike your home?” asked her lover, wondering at this hitherto unknown characteristic in a young woman. “I loathe it, and so does my sister, though she pretends to be domestic and religious and all that kind of thing. Lady Baldwin is an impossible person, and our housekeeping would disgrace the Union. If I had not had the _entrée_ of plenty of good houses, and been in request, I should have been found hanging in one of the attics years ago.”