"That's right. Work's the best answer to talk. Did you feel it much here in that rainy spell?"
"The meadows were a bit splashy, of course, but the water never got anywhere near the house."
"But it will. Don't you make any mistake. It will. Only, of course, we've had a dry Autumn. Why, last June year Miss Peasey could have been fishing for minnows in her kitchen. Now that seems a nice upstanding sort of woman. A Wesleen, they tell me? I haven't seen her in church that I can remember, and which would account for it. But I never talk to the chapel folk, they being that uncivilized. She's rather deaf, isn't she?"
"Yes, and therefore cannot gossip," Guy snapped.
"Well, I don't know," said Godbold, doubtfully. "Some of the most unnatural scandals I ever heard were made by deaf women. Though that doesn't mean I'm saying Miss Peasey is a talker."
"I'm sure she isn't," Guy agreed. "Good night, Mr. Godbold."
"Good night, Mr. Hazlewood. Don't you be discouraged by the gossip in Wychford. I always say, if you believe nothing you hear, next to nothing of what you read, and only half of what you see, no one can touch you. Good night once more, sir. And don't you fret over what people say. I remember they once said I tried to work a horse which had the blind staggers, and Mrs. Godbold was that aggravated she went and washed a shirt of mine twice over, worrying herself. Good night, Mr. Hazlewood."
This time the red-bearded carrier of Wychford (not an inappropriate profession for him) really departed, leaving Guy in a state of considerable resentment at the thought of the Wychford commentary.
That night the raw drizzle turned to snow; and when he looked out of his window next morning it was lying thick over the country and was making his bedroom seem as gray as the loaded clouds above. That exhilaration of a new landscape which comes with snow drove away some of Guy's depression, and after breakfast he went out, curious to contemplate its effect upon the Abbey. In the black frost the great pile had seemed to possess scarcely more substance than a shredded leaf; and when it lay sodden beneath the dripping trees, a manifest decay had made extinction infamous with the ooze of a rotting fungus. The weather now had brought a strange restoration to the abandoned house, and so completely had the covering of snow hidden most of the signs of dissolution that Wychford Abbey seemed no longer dead, but asleep in the quiet of a Winter morning. The lawn in front stretched before it in decent whiteness, and the veiling of the ragged, unhealthy grass took away from the front of the house that air of wan caducity, endowing the stones by contrast with tinted warmth and richness. The decrepit roof was hidden, and Wychford Abbey dreamed under its weight of snow with all the placid romance of a house on a Christmas card. The dark plantation was deprived of its gloom, and what was usually a kind of haunted stillness was now aspectful peace. Guy went over the crinching ground and strolled down the broad walk through the shrubbery. Everywhere the snow glistened with the footprints of many birds, but not a single call broke a silence which was cold and absolute except for the powdery whisper of the snow where it was sliding from the holly leaves.
When Guy reached the bottom of the shrubbery he sat down on a fallen trunk by a backwater, which dried up here in the drift of dead leaves; and he watched the surface of it glazing perceptibly, yet not so fast but that the faint motion of the freezing air could write upon the smoothness a tremulous reticulation. He had not been resting long when he saw Margaret coming towards him down the walk, and with so light a tread that in her white coat she might have been a figment created for his fancy by the snow. He wondered if a sense of the added beauty her presence gave the scene were in her mind. Probably it was, for Margaret had a discreet vanity that would never gratify itself so well as when she was alone; and plainly she must suppose herself alone, since here on this snowy morning she would not have expected to meet anybody. Guy thought it would be considerate to draw aside without spoiling her dream, whatever the subject of the meditation. However, as he rose from the log to take the narrow path along the backwater and so turn homeward across the fields by the river, Margaret saw him and waved with a feathery gesture. As Guy went up the path to greet her he was thinking how much her hair was like a dark leaf that had shaken off the snow, so easily might her blanched attire have fallen upon her from the clouds; then, as he came close, every charming fancy was suddenly spoiled by a remembrance of Wychford gossip, and he turned hastily round to see if there were prying glances in the laurels.