Discouragement encountered him on the threshold. The lady sat by a blazing fire, with her back to a window through which the frosty sun of February was sending lovely prophecies of the summer. She was in a gorgeous dressing-gown, her plentiful black hair twisted carelessly, but with a show of defiance, round her head. She was almost a young woman still, with a hardness of expression that belonged neither to youth nor age. She sat sideways to the door, so that without turning her head she must have seen the parson enter, but she did not move a visible hair's-breadth. Her feet, in silk stockings and shabby slippers, continued perched on the fender. She made no sign of greeting when the parson came in front of her, but a scowl dark as night settled on her low forehead and black eyebrows, and her face shortened and spread out. Wingfold approached her with the air of a man who knew himself unwelcome but did not much mind--for he had not to care about himself. “Good morning, Mrs. Wylder!” he said. “What a lovely morning it is!” “Is it? I know nothing about it. You have a brutal climate!” He knew she regarded him as the objectionable agent of a more objectionable Heaven. “You would not dislike it so much if you met it out of doors. A walk on a day like this, now,--” “Pray who authorized you to come and offer me advice I Have I concealed from you, Mr. Wingfold, that your presence gives me no pleasure?” “You certainly have not! You have been quite honest with me. I did not come in the hope of pleasing you--though I wish I could.” “Then perhaps you will explain why you are here!” “There are visits that must be made, even with the certainty of giving annoyance!” answered Wingfold, rather cheerfully. “That means you consider yourself justified in forcing your way into my room, before I am dressed, with the simple intention of making yourself disagreeable!” “If I were here on my own business, you might well blame me! But what would you say to one of your men who told you he dared not go your message for fear of the lightning?” “I would tell him he was a coward, and to go about his business.” “That, then, is what I don't want to be told!” “And for fear of being told it, you dare me!” “Well--you may put it so;--yes.” “I don't like you the worse for your courage. There's more than one man would face half a dozen bush-rangers rather than a woman I know!” “I believe it. But it makes no extravagant demand on my courage. I am not afraid of _you_. I owe you nothing--except any service worth doing for you!” “Let that blind down: the sun's putting the fire out.” “It's a pity to put the sun out in such a brutal climate. He does the fire no harm.” “Don't tell _me_!” “Science says he does not.” “He puts the fire out, I tell you!” “I do not think so.” “I've seen it with my own eyes. God knows which is the greater humbug--Science or Religion!--Are you going to pull that blind down?” Wingfold lowered the blind.