Certainly when he returned to Overton for the holidays with Considine's encouraging report, she felt terribly lonely. For the last two months she had concerned herself so passionately with the discovery--one might almost say the creation--of his soul, that his departure left her not only with a physical blank, but with a spiritual anxiety. She wondered all the time what was happening to him; whether in her absence he was keeping it up or drifting into a state of tragic relapse. On the evening before he left she had made him promise to write to her, but his boyish letters were wholly unsatisfactory. She believed that he was telling her the truth in them, and yet he told her so little. She even wished that she had kept up the habit of writing to Mrs. Payne; for the least sidelight on the condition of affairs at Overton would have been grateful to her. She did write to Mrs. Payne, but destroyed the letter, feeling that a sudden revival of her custom when Arthur was no longer at Lapton would seem merely ridiculous. The Christmas holidays were a dreary time for her. Deserted by all youth the Manor House slipped back into its ancient and melancholy peace. Winter descended on them. She had been told that the climate of South Devon resembled that of Connemara, but this was not the kind of winter that she had known before. Snow never fell, as it used to fall on her own mountains, turning Slieveannilaun into a great ghost, and bringing the distant peaks of the Twelve Pins incredibly nearer. Perhaps snow fell on Dartmoor; but from Lapton Dartmoor could not be seen. In those deep valleys it could only be felt as a reservoir of chilly moisture, or a barrier confining cold, dank air. Instead of snowing it rained incessantly. The soft lanes became impassable with mud, turning Lapton into a peninsula, if not an island. At the New Year they went on a visit to Halberton House. During their stay there Lady Barbara conceived a sudden and violent passion for Gabrielle, that culminated in Gabrielle being taken solemnly to her cousin's virginal bedroom and hearing the story of an old unhappy love-affair. All the time that she listened to Lady Barbara's plaintive voice Gabrielle was wondering what had happened at Overton, and whether Arthur was keeping to the solemn undertaking that he had given her. She wondered if it were possible that regard for his mother's feelings might now be filling the place of her own influence; if Mrs. Payne were arrogantly taking to herself the credit for the miracle which Lapton had seen so laboriously begun. She hoped, knowing that it was wicked of her to do so, that this had not happened. She felt that the change in Arthur was hers and hers only. She found herself forced to confess that she was jealous of Mrs. Payne....