"It is a foot deep in the street," she said. "The evergreens in the Campus are loaded; the firs and junipers are like enormous sugar-loaves, and some of the slighter trees—cedar and arbor-vitæ—are bowed nearly double. There is one"—laughing with almost her olden glee—"the ambitious arbor-vitæ near the east gate, which you said last Sunday, 'carried too much sail aloft for a gale,' whose crown not only touches the ground, but is frozen there, while the roots hold firm. I wish you could see it! It reminds me of the poor lady who, in her rage to be ultra-fashionable, had her hair dressed very à la Chinoise,—dragged up so high and twisted so tightly on the back of her head, that she could not get her heels to the floor. I do enjoy a grand old-fashioned snow-storm! None of the petulant flurries with swirling flakes, that spend their strength in an hour, but such a tempest as this, that does not abate under a day and a night. One has such a delicious feeling of home comfort and seclusion—the almost certainty that strangers will not intermeddle with fireside joys and interests while the household is shut in—I was about to say—tucked in snugly by the great white veil."
Roy liked to hear her talk. Her girlish prattle was more charming to him than the profoundest disquisitions of scholars, or the brilliant repartee of literary coteries. Aware of this, and that part of her nursely duty was to amuse the patient; ignorant that his heart was leaping with a new-born hope, so sweet and sudden that his head whirled dizzily under its influence, and the world took on rarest robes of beauty, she rambled on, her eyes bent upon the driving fleeces without. She had never been handsomer than now. Every trace of the shock that had prostrated nervous forces and reason, three months before, was gone from figure and countenance, while she thought only of gratifying her companion and her own fancy for a wild, winter day. Not dreaming of the impassioned gaze that dwelt upon her, she stood in an attitude of careless grace, a half smile playing about her mouth.
"As she used to stand in the oriel, at sunset!" thought Roy, with an unheard sigh. "Is all that, then,
"'The tender grace of a day that is dead'?
Can it 'never come back to me?'"
"I can think how Old Windbeam would wrap this mantle about his head and shoulders," resumed Jessie more softly. "How blackly the pines show against his sides! The meadows are an immense méringue; Willow Creek is frozen and invisible under the snow—so tightly locked within its banks that its groans can be heard, in the pauses of the storm, all the way to the Parsonage. I used to lie awake on sharp, frosty nights, and hear the rumble of the imprisoned air running all the way from the upper bridge down to the falls. The holly-berries on the tree by the front porch peep out saucily from the little woolly piles that collect upon the spikes and leaves; the church-yard is level from fence to fence—oh, Roy!"
With the cry, she sank down upon a low seat, weeping as from the depths of a riven heart.
"Under the snow! under the snow!" she reiterated, in a transport of distress. "I cannot bear to think of it!"
"Come to me, dear Jessie!" said Fordham, in gentle command. He hardly expected that she would obey, but she did, groping her way by reason of the blinding tears, and sobbing unrestrainedly. He had not seen her weep before since the night of her arrival at the cottage.
"Sit here!" he said, designating a chair at his side. "I have something to say when you can hear it. These tears will ease your burdened heart, and they are due to the memory of the dear ones who are for a little while out of our sight."