he many hills of the
Ambleside road.

The night was not yet wholly in possession. The limestone road shone
dimly white, the forms of the leafless trees passed them in a windy
procession, and afar on the horizon, beyond the dark gulf of the lake,
there was visible at intervals a persistent dimness, something less
black than the sky above and the veiled earth below, which Fenwick
knew must be the snowy tops of the mountains. But it was a twilight
more mournful than a total darkness; the damp air was nipping cold,
and every few minutes gusts of sleet drove in their faces.

The two brothers talked to each other sometimes, in a broad
Westmoreland speech. To Fenwick the dialect of his childhood was
already strange and disagreeable. So, too, was the wild roughness of
the Northern night, the length of the road, the sense of increasing
distance from all that most held his mind. He longed, indeed, to see
Phoebe and the child, but it was as though he had wilfully set up some
barrier between himself and them, which spoiled his natural pleasure.
Moreover, he was afraid of Phoebe, of her quick jealous love, and of
certain passionate possibilities in her character that he had long
ago discerned. If she discovered that he had made a mystery of his
marriage--that he had passed in London as unmarried? It was an ugly
and uncomfortable 'if.' Did he shrink from the possible blow to
her--or the possible trouble to himself? Well, she must not find it
out! It had been a wretched sort of accident, and before it could do
any harm it should be amended.

Suddenly, a sound of angry water. They were close on the lake, and
waves driven by the wind were plashing on the shore. Across the lake,
a light in a house-window shone through the storm, the only reminder
of human life amid a dark wilderness of mountains. Wild sounds crashed
through the trees; and accompanying the tumult of water came the
rattle of a bitter rain lashing the road, the cart, and their bent
shoulders.

'There'll not be a dry stitch on us soon,' said Fenwick, presently, to
the young man beside him.

'Aye, it's dampish,' said his companion, cheerfully.

The caution of the adjective set Fenwick grinning. The North found and
gripped him; these are not the ways of the South.

And in a moment the sense of contrast, thus provoked, had carried him
far--out of the Westmoreland night, back to London, and his shabby
studio in Bernard Street. There, throned on a low platform, sat Madam