"He should not have asked," thought poor Winifred. Then she found he was preparing to send oh James with the carriage, and to walk back with her. "If you will let me?" he said questioningly. "I should like it," Winifred said, so eagerly that he brightened still more. It struck both of them with a pleasant sense of warmth that they two should be walking alone together through the lanes. It was winter, but Anthony thought there was plenty of colour and brightness, and perhaps Winifred's red cloak had something to do with it. As for her, after the gleam of those few delicious moments, the dull weight of what she had to say came back with depressing heaviness. Anthony's good-humour and lightness of heart added a hundredfold to the difficulty of her task; yet, time was passing, and she felt with terror that each step brought them nearer to Thorpe. She was always deficient in the feminine art of doubling upon her subject, and in this hour of need it seemed as if she were duller than ever. Anthony, however, knowing nothing of her inward strife, was quite content with Winifred's softness and kindness; he talked gayly--more gayly than he had talked since the Vicar's death--of what he had been doing in London. "I think I see my way to some satisfactory work at last," he said. "Shall you live in London, do you mean?" asked Winifred, thinking not of London, but of nearer things. "One must, you know," Anthony said slowly. And yet, although he had been dissatisfied with Thorpe of late, he said these words with a strange reluctance in his heart. "It is necessary to be in the midst of things. This place is so far off." "Trenance is let, is it not?" Winifred was plunging nervously into her subject. "Yes, and, oddly enough, to a relation of old Lucas. You remember old Lucas, don't you? I wonder what this Sir Somebody Somebody is like, and whether it runs in the family to wear your hat at the back of your head."