When New Year's Day came round, the little household had fallen back into its ordinary routine. Mona had decorated the parlour with evergreens before Rachel left her sick-room; had superintended divers important proceedings in the kitchen; and had done her best to feel, and to make others feel, the festive influence of the season. The attempt had not been a very successful one, however; Rachel was at no time susceptible to the poetry of domestic life; and when dim visions rose in Mona's mind of giving a treat to her protégées, or to the Sunday-school children, she forced herself to remember that she was only a humble shopkeeper, bound to keep within the limits of her rôle. For one night she had played a more important part, but that was over now. She was back in her humble sphere, and, for very art's sake, she must keep her true proportion till the end. Fortunately, she was asked to assist in the management of one or two "treats," and, by means of these and a few anonymous contributions to local charities, she—to use an expression of her own—"saved her soul alive." She looked for no selfish enjoyment, she told herself. Auntie Bell was the only human thing in the neighbourhood whom, for her own sake, she really cared to see; Auntie Bell—and perhaps one other; but, although Mona often saw the doctor's gig in those days, she never chanced to meet the doctor.
A New Year dinner is not a very cheerful festivity in a somewhat uncongenial solitude à deux, and Mona was not sorry when an invitation came for Rachel to drink tea with a crony in the evening. She herself was included in the invitation, but had no difficulty in getting out of it. She was popular on the whole, among Rachel's friends, but there was a general consensus of opinion among them that, when it came to a regular gossip over the fire, Miss Maclean, with all her cleverness, was a sad wet-blanket. Sally had been promised a half-holiday, and Rachel had some compunction about leaving her cousin alone, but Mona laughed at the idea.
"The arrangement suits me quite as well as it does you," she said; "I am going to take some of my mince-pies to old Jenny, and I have no doubt she will give me a cup of tea. She has been on my mind all day. It is glorious weather for a walk, and I shall have a full moon to light me home."
And in truth it was a glorious day for a walk. The thermometer had fallen abruptly after a heavy mist, and the great stretch of fields was perfectly white with the deepest hoar-frost Mona had ever seen. From every stone in the dyke, every blade of grass by the wayside, every hardy scrap of moss and lichen, the most exquisite ice-needles stood out in wonderful coruscations, sparkling and blazing in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun; a huge spider's web in the window of an old barn looked like some marvellous piece of fairy lacework; the cart-ruts in the more deserted roads were spanned by tiny rafters of ice; and above all, the moon, modest and retiring as yet, looked down from an infinitely distant expanse of pale, cloudless sky.
Very slowly the sun sank below the horizon, and the moon asserted herself more and more; till, when Mona reached the pine-wood, the mystic, unearthly beauty of the scene brought the actual tears into her eyes. The silence was broken only by sounds that served to gauge its depth; the recesses of the wood were as gloomy and mysterious as ever; but the moonlight streamed down on graceful tops and spreading branches, not burdened with massive whiteness, but transformed into crystal. A pine-wood in snow is a sight to be seen, but the work of the snow is only a daub, after all, when compared with the artist touch of a frost like this.
Mona scarcely knew how long she stood there, unwilling even to lean against the gate and so destroy its perfect bloom; but she was disturbed at last by the sound of wheels on the carriage-drive. Had the Colonel come back? Was Jenny ill? And then with a quick flash of conviction she knew whom she was going to see.
It was Dudley, leading his horse by the bridle, and looking worn and anxious. He brightened up and quickened his step when he saw a woman's figure at the gate; then recognised who it was, and stopped short, with something like a groan. Poor Dudley! A moment before he would have given almost anything he possessed for the presence of a female human creature, and now that his prayer was granted, how he wished that it had been any other woman in the world than just this one whom the Fates had sent!
He had no choice, however, and he plunged into the matter at once, with white lips, but with a quick, resolute voice.
"I am in a sore dilemma, Miss Maclean," he said. "I was sent for suddenly up country to a case of arsenical poisoning; and, as I went past, they stopped me at those cottar-houses to tell me that there was a poor soul in extremity here. It's your little Maggie, by the way. Poor child! She may well ask herself whether life is worth living now! Of course I had to go on to my man, but I left him before I really ought to have done so, and now I must hurry back. The baby is just born."
"Is Jenny here?" Mona found it difficult to speak at all in the deafening rush of sorrow and bitterness that came over her.