"But that is a Catholic institution!"
"So much the better."
"This is extremely kind, extremely generous of you!" said she, in her most English, and therefore haughtiest manner. "But I myself have had the same intention. We can work together, I suppose!"
"No, I prefer that you leave this to me."
To this she replied sneeringly, and a new cause of recrimination ensued.
Pauline rose abruptly from the snowy mound and walked to the road, Ringfield following her, and they did not know that never again on this earth and during this life would they meet thus—part thus—alone, with full opportunity to say what they thought, what they wished.
Sadness fell on both as they shortly went different ways, but whereas the lively nature of one was soon occupied gaily at Poussette's with fresh purchases to look at and approve, in the other grief was succeeded by a gathering of all his forces, as he mentally resolved (swore, to rightly translate his indomitable mood) to prevent the marriage. For this was what he had arrived at; nothing more nor less, and how it might be done haunted him continually as he walked by night on the frozen road, or sat at meals within sound of Crabbe's cynical and lettered humour, and within sight of Pauline's white hands on which gleamed a couple of new and handsome rings.
She must not marry him! That became the burden of his thought, and the time-limit of three weeks, bringing it to Christmas Eve, was to him as the month before execution of the condemned criminal.
She must not marry him! What then, could or in all likelihood would, prevent this consummation? The hours flew by and he thought of no plan. The hard weather still held and grew harder, colder, until the great drifts blocked all the roads, and St. Ignace was cut off from the outside world. Still, any hour a thaw might set in and, at the worst, the railway was hardly ever impracticable for more than a couple of days. Delay there might be, but one could see that Crabbe would not refuse to welcome even delay; he sat at the head of the chief table clad in the regulation tweeds of the country gentleman, and with a kind of fierce and domineering inflation in his manner that subdued the irrepressible hilarity of Poussette, threatening to break out again, for by way of keeping his pledge as to liquor, he seemed to take more beer than was necessary or good for him. The Cordova, held as a willing witness and prospective bridesmaid, had to "learn her place" under the new régime, and felt fully as miserable as she looked, for now no longer revelry graced the night. Poussette's unnaturally long face matched with Pauline's hauteur and Crabbe's careless air of mastery; he, the sullen cad, the drunken loafer, having become the arbiter of manners, the final court of appeal. One day Ringfield had been lashed to even unusual distress and mortification by the offensive manner of the guide, who in the course of conversation at the table had allowed his natural dislike of Dissent and Dissenters to show; "damned Methodists," and all that sort of talk. The very terms annoyed Ringfield; they savoured of the Old Country, not of Canada, where denominational hatred and bigotry should be less pronounced, and as he left the room Poussette joined him in the hall.
"Bigosh, Mr. Ringfield, sir—but I don't know how you stand that talk so long—no, sir, I don't know at all!" He patted the other on the back.