“Wot’s he bin up to now, I wonder,” Moggridge panted to himself—for the second pair of feet belonged to him. “Shamming nose-bleed and sending me in for an ’andkerchief, and then sneaking off here by ’isself!” “What a time you’ve been,” said Mr Beveridge, slipping the purse with its contents into his pocket. “I was so infernally cold I had to take a little walk. Got the handkerchief?” In silence and with a suspicious solemnity Moggridge handed him the handkerchief, and they turned back for the house. “Now for a balloon,” Mr Beveridge reflected. Certainly it was cold. The frost nipped sharp that night, and next morning there were ice gardens on the windows, and the park lay white all through the winter sunshine. By evening the private lake was reported to be bearing, and the next day it hummed under the first skaters. Hardly necessary to say Mr Beveridge was among the earliest of them, or that he was at once the object of general admiration and envy. He traced “vines” and “Q’s,” and performed wonderful feats on one leg all morning. At lunch he was in the best of spirits, and was off again at once to the ice. When he reached the lake in the afternoon the first person he spied was Lady Alicia, and five minutes afterwards they were sailing off together hand in hand. “I knew you would come to-day,” he remarked. “How _could_ you have known? It was by the merest chance I happened to come.” “It has always been by the merest chance that any of them have ever come.” “Who have ever come?” she inquired, with a vague feeling that he had said something he ought not to have, and that she was doing the same. “Many things,” he smiled, “including purses. Which reminds me that I am eternally your debtor.” She blushed and said, “I hope you didn’t mind.” “Not much,” he answered, candidly. “In my present circumstances a five-pound note is more acceptable than a caress.” The Lady Alicia again remembered the maidenly proprieties, and tried to change the subject. “What beautiful ice!” she said. “The question now is,” he continued, paying no heed to this diversion, “what am I to do next?” “What do you mean?” she asked a little faintly, realising dimly that she was being regarded as a fellow-conspirator in some unlawful project. “The wall is high, there is bottle-glass on the top, and I shall find it hard to bring away a fresh pair of trousers, and probably draughty if I don’t. The gates are always kept closed, and it isn’t worth any one’s while to open them for £10, 17s. 6d., less the price of a first-class ticket up to town. What are we to do?” “We?” she gasped. “You and I,” he explained. “But—but I can’t _possibly_ do anything.” “ ‘Can’t possibly’ is a phrase I have learned to misunderstand.” “Really, Mr Beveridge, I mustn’t do anything.” “Mustn’t is an invariable preface to a sin. Never use it; it’s a temptation in itself.” “It wouldn’t be right,” she said, with quite a show of firmness.