st, except what he had
told her. She had taken him on trust. He had led something of an
adventurous life in wild parts of Africa. Two or three times, under
pressure, he had told of an adventurous incident, wherein assuredly he
himself had not played a coward's part. Yet the recollection so far
from clearing him in her estimation produced a contrary effect, and her
lips curled as she decided that he had merely been bragging on these
occasions; that if the events had happened at all they must have
happened to somebody else. For, when all was said and done, he had
shown himself a coward in her sight. Her hastily formed judgment
stood--if anything--stronger than before. And--she was engaged to marry
a coward!

With a sad sinking of heart she left the spot, and, avoiding all escort
or companionship, took her way homeward alone. The short winter
afternoon was waning, and a red afterglow was already fast fading into
the grey of dusk. Against it the chimney stacks of Courtland Hall stood
silhouetted blackly, while farther down, among the leafless and frost
spangled tree-tops, the old church-tower stood square and massive.

It was Christmas Eve, and now the bells in the tower rang out in sudden
and tuneful chime, flinging their merry peal far and wide over leafless
woodland and frozen meadow. They blended, too, with the ring of belated
blades on the ice-bound mere behind, and the sound of voices mellowed by
distance. To this girl, now hurrying along the field path, her little
skates dangling from her wrist, but for the events of the last half-hour
how sweet and hallowed and homelike it would all have been; glorified,
too, by the presence of _one_! Now, anger, disgust, contempt filled her
mind; and her heart was aching and sore with the void of an ideal cast
out.

One was there as she struck into the garden path leading up to the
terrace. He was pacing up and down smoking a cigar.

"Well?" he said, turning suddenly upon her. "Well, and have you had
time to reconsider your very hastily expressed opinion?"

"It was not hastily expressed. It was deliberate," she replied quickly.
"I have no words for a coward. I said that before."

"Yes, you said that before--for the amusement of a mob of grunting
yokels, and an odd social equal or two. And now you repeat it. Very
well. Think what you please. It is utterly immaterial to me now and
henceforward. I will not even say good-bye."

He walked away from her in th