recede, he would crumble and decay
and cease to care, and death would come soon enough.

Then the wind smote his face and tore at his coat: the snow died away,
beyond the black bare trees a very faint yellow bar threaded the thick
grey--promise that the storm was at an end.

Suddenly with the cessation of the storm the long field of white seemed
good and restful, and beyond the park the houses showed light in their
windows.

The yellow spread through the sky, and stars, very slowly, came and the
wind died away.

Courage filled him. Rachel might never come or write or care, but he
would make the thought of her the one true thing in his heart, and with
that he would do battle so long as he could.

Christopher and Miss Rand ... he thought of them as he trudged his way
home--and when he saw the white silence of Saxton Square and the golden
sky breaking above its peace and quiet he thought that, for a time
longer, he would keep his place and hold his own.

CHAPTER II

A LITTLE HOUSE

"Each in the crypt would cry,
'But one freezes here! and why?
'When a heart, as chill,
'At my own would thrill
Back to life, and its fires out-fly?
'Heart, shall we live or die?
The rest ... settle by-and-by!'"

ROBERT BROWNING.

I

Rachel at Seddon Court watched, from her window, that first fallen snow.

Seddon Court is about three miles from the town of Lewes and lies,
tucked and cornered, under the very brow of the Downs. It is a grey
little house, old and stalwart, with a courtyard and two towers. The
towers are Norman; the rest of the house is Tudor.

Beyond the actual building there are gardens that run to the very foot
of the Downs, with only a patch and an old stone wall intervening. Above
the house, day and night, year after year, the Downs are bending;
everything, beneath their steady solemn gaze, is small and restless; as
the colours are flung by the sun across their green sprawling limbs the
house, at their feet, catches their reflected smile and, when the sun is
gone and the winds blow, cowers beneath their frown; everything in that
house is conscious of their presence.

Rachel had been at Seddon Court for a month and now, at the window of
her writing-room, looking across the garden, up into their dark shadows,
she wondered at their indifference and monotony. Anyone who had known
her before her marriage would be struck instantly, on seeing her now, by
a change in