In a smiling silence she drew in a great breath of the frosty air while her eyes ranged along the chalk down, on the western edge of which they were walking, and then over the plain at their feet, the smoke wreaths that hung above the villages, the western sky filled stormily with the purples and grays and crimsons of the sunset, the woods that climbed the down, or ran in a dark rampart along its crest.
"No one can ever love it as much as I do!"--she said at last--"because I have been an exile. That will be my advantage always."
"Your compensation--perhaps."
"Mrs. Colwood puts it that way. Only I don't like having my grievance taken away."
"Against whom?"
"Ah! not against papa!" she said, hurriedly--"against Fate!"
"If you dislike being deprived of a grievance--so do I. You have returned me my Rossetti."
She laughed merrily.
"You made sure I should lose or keep it?"
"It is the first book that anybody has returned to me for years. I was quite resigned."