“Dear Mr. Kingcote,
“Why have you not been to see me? Several people who brought me nothing but their dulness have found their way here the last few days. Will you come to-morrow at eleven—if you can miss Mr. Vissian’s sermon for once?”
The snow fell, but from a rift of glory up above streamed one broad beam, which made the earth shimmer. Presently began the Winstoke bells; their music was carried off to the south by a shrewd wind, whose task it was to bake the ground that the snow might lie. Wind and snow had their way; the sun drew back and veiled itself; the white downfall thickened, chased and whirled into frenzy by the shrilling north. The turmoil made Kingcote laugh with pleasure. When he quitted the cottage, he had to leap over a high ridge of driven snow. The oak-stump had a white cloak on its back; the road was a smooth white surface, not a little treacherous whilst still unhardened. But there was life in the keen air, and the delight of change in the new face of each familiar thing.
It cost some stamping of the feet and shaking of upper garments before he could pass from the threshold of Knightswell into the hall. The footman seemed prepared for his arrival, and bade him follow him up the stairs. The chief rooms of the house were all on the ground floor; Kingcote had never yet ascended. The room into which he was ushered was Isabel’s boudoir, small, with only one window, daintily furnished. It caught his senses with a faint pervading perfume, a soft harmony of clear colours, a witchery of light broken by curtains and tinged with hues from gleaming surfaces; his foot was flattered by the yielding carpet. He did not at first see where she sat, for her chair was in a dim corner; besides, the fireplace intervened with its great blaze.
“I never thought you would face this terrible weather!”
“The weather? What of that? Was I not to see you at eleven?”
She might not stand yet, but both her hands were held out to him. There was a low chair not far from her; he drew it nearer and sat looking into her face. It was of an exquisite pallor, just touched on either cheek with present emotion; thinner, but only—at all events to his eyes—the more beautiful. There was an indescribable freshness in her appearance—her white neck caressed by soft lace, the lines which her hair made on the purity of her brow, her bright, just-moistened eye, the graceful repose of her still feeble frame.
“You find me changed?” she asked, in a voice which trembled in trying to be merely mirthful.
“I see no change. You are pale, but your face is what it always was.”
“You are growing stronger?” he asked, when she kept silence. “Danger is past?”