And so he went on. It seemed to Winifred, poor child, as if he had never talked so fast or so brightly, and all the while, though, as I have said, that thing which she had to tell lay like a cruel weight upon her heart, there was also a secret joy, a delight in this return of free confidence, a feeling as though the happiness which had once seemed possible were possible again. Anthony, too, had vague thoughts stirring. He was pleased at Winifred's walking back with him, at her little concession; for of late he had declared angrily that she was cold, changed, variable. He was too much taken up with his satisfaction to see her wistful looks, or to guess how her heart ached with the thought that it was she herself who must embitter these quickly passing moments. Already she was wasting time dangerously. They had reached the gate where Winifred and Mr Robert had stood and looked across the meadows. The transient glow which had so beautified the common things was gone, a grey gloom had crept over the snowy clouds, everything lay stretched in a bare, flat level; it seemed no more than a dull land of hedges and ditches, with a few ugly poplars and insignificant hills. Anthony laughed at Winifred a little for stopping to look at them, but indeed she felt as if she needed the bar of the gate by which to hold, so strange a tremor had seized upon her. She glanced at him with the hope that he would see that something was wrong and question her, for it seemed to her as if her face must tell the tale alone; but he talked on happily, until Winifred interrupted him with sudden abruptness. "Anthony," she said, "do you know that there is a cruel report abroad about you?" Her heart beat so fast that she could hardly speak, and yet her voice sounded in her own ears harsh and unfeeling. "A report?" said Anthony inquiringly. He began to wonder whether she could have heard what had been told him a few days ago, that he was engaged to Miss Milman. It might be unlike Winifred to speak in this fashion, but a man is often egotist enough to forget these impossibilities, and he folded his arms on the bar of the gate, and laughed and looked round with a pleasant anticipation of fault-finding. Winifred kept her face turned from him, and went on nervously. "They say that Mr Tregennas wanted to have changed his will at the last, and to have left half his fortune to his granddaughter--" Something choked her voice. Anthony looked at her and gave a little whistle of astonishment. "Then why on earth did he not?" "They say that he wrote to you to tell you his desire, placing the matter entirely in your hands, and requesting that if you decided against it,"--she left out his father's name, fearing to seem irreverent to the dead,--"you would take no notice of the letter; and they say--" He interrupted her here sharply. "They! Whom do you mean by they?"