"But that was easy," she said, "that was church against church, state against state, prince against prince. This will be the church divided against itself, the nation divided against itself, subject against king, one good man against another. Think, if you join Mr. Hampden and Mr. Pym what noble and wise men you will have against you! (for you honour Sir Bevil Grenvill and Lord Falkland as much as we do); what violent and fanatical men with you!" "If all good men were on one side," he said, sorrowfully, "there need be few battles in church or state." "It seems to me," she added, "there is no party one would willingly join save that of the peace-makers." "That indeed is the very party I would seek to join," said my Father. "But that seems to me the very party which, from ancient times, has been stigmatized as those who turn the world upside down. Since the Fall peace can seldom be reached save through conflict." Meanwhile Roger had joined us, and Lettice, as we were about to separate, whispered to me, clasping my hands in hers,-- "They may turn the world upside down, Olive, but they shall not separate us! How happy it is for us," she said, turning to Roger, who was standing a little apart, "that, as Harry says, women have nothing to do with politics." "I am afraid," he said, in his abrupt way, "women have often more than any to suffer from politics." "You take things so gravely, Roger," she said. "Everything would be right if you would not all of you be so hard on people who have done a little wrong; and would only try and believe what we must all wish, and so bring it about." "Everything will be _wrong_," said Roger, with melancholy emphasis, "if you will believe things and people because you wish, and not because they are true." For Roger, true to every one, was truthful to scrupulousness with Lettice; what she was, or became, being of more moment to him than even what she thought of him. But Lettice only laughed, and said,-- "I am not sixteen, and I have seen the country at the point of ruin, I cannot tell how many times. Other clouds have blown over, and so will this." And she sped away to rejoin her mother, only once more turning back to wave her hand and say: "To-morrow morning, Olive, at the Lady Well! The ice will be strong enough on the Mere for skating. To-morrow!" But the next morning, when Roger and I went to the Lady Well, no Lettice was there. Snow had fallen in the night. The frozen surface of the Mere was strewn with it, except in places where it was sheltered by the overhanging brushwood, where it lay black as steel against the white banks. All the music was frozen in stream and wood. The drops, whose soft trickling into the well beneath, had floated Lettice and me into fairy-land last summer, hung in glittering silent icicles around the stone sides of the well. And Roger and I went silently home. "The snow has detained her," I said. "She is not so easily turned aside from a promise," he said.