“You are master of me, and I am you, Richard. O, dear! are you going to break my heart after all you’ve said?” I caught her to me once more in a rapture. “You dear passionate baby! Do you realise to what, to whom you are binding yourself?” “Yes, to my Richard, if you please; and if you abuse him any more, I shall cry in good earnest.” How could I answer but in the terms of that lovers’ text-book which has endured since Eden? A silence fell between us; and then suddenly I felt myself shivering. “We are a couple of fools, young woman,” I said, “love-making out here in the snow. That is not the way to provide against troubles that will need all our strength to meet them.” She bestirred herself in quick alarm. “O dear! what a selfish wretch! You have been keeping me warm all this time at your own cost. O, come away, Richard--come away at once, before it is too late.” She pulled frantically at me. I laughed. “I expect you will have to carry _me_ now, Ira. I feel as stiff as a gun barrel.” “Richard!” “There, Miss Christmas--nothing but my chaff; but on my word we ought to be moving. Will you come and sit with me a little in my own lodge?” “O! you mustn’t ask me, Richard.” “But, supposing I do, and insist?” “Then I shall obey, of course.” “And be very unhappy, of course; and a sweet dutiful devoted child. I am learning by degrees, Ira. But I must take you that way, though not to stop, because, with all my ardour, the prospect of that climb back by the fields doesn’t appeal to me, and the road is swept clean by the wind, so that we can walk on it easily, and get back by the main entrance. Come along, child.” I had to carry her through the lane, nevertheless, and so on mostly until we reached the woods, where I could trust her to her own pretty feet. And there we walked in security, like authorised lovers. “Now,” I said, “I have been forgetting everything but just our two selves. Is Lady Skene so very unapproachable, Ira?” She stopped me suddenly, clinging to me, with a pained line come between her eyes. “What does it all mean, Richard? There is something more than the child--I am sure of it; and it fills me with fear and anxiety.” I held her silent a little, turning my face away in a gloom of irresolution. “Yes, Ira, there is something more,” I said presently, and very softly--“something terribly serious and terribly upsetting.” “I was certain of it,” she whispered. “And you know what it is? I can never forget her face that evening I found you, together. Am I not to know, Richard? It is not for my curiosity, indeed.”