“The dust and awful treasures of the dead,”

and even now the light of her happiness was breaking on her tortured night as the cold gleams of the Christmas morning were breaking over the fury of the storm without.

And then, chilled and numb in body and mind, she crept into her bed again and at last lost herself in sleep.

By half-past nine o’clock, when Ida came down to breakfast, the gale had utterly gone, though its footprints were visible enough in shattered trees, unthatched stacks, and ivy torn in knotty sheets from the old walls it clothed.  It would have been difficult to recognise in the cold and stately lady who stood at the dining-room window, noting the havoc and waiting for her father to come in, the lovely, passionate, dishevelled woman who some few hours before had thrown herself upon her knees praying to God for the succour she could not win from man.  Women, like nature, have many moods and many aspects to express them.  The hot fit had passed, and the cold fit was on her now.  Her face, except for the dark hollows round the eyes, was white as winter, and her heart was cold as winter’s ice.

Presently her father came in.

“What a gale,” he said, “what a gale!  Upon my word I began to think that the old place was coming down about our ears, and the wreck among the trees is dreadful.  I don’t think there can have been such a wind since the time of King Charles I., when the top of the tower was blown right off the church.  You remember I was showing you the entry about it in the registers the other day, the one signed by the parson and old Sir James de la Molle.  The boy who has just come up with the letters tells me he hears that poor old Mrs. Massey’s summer-house on the top of Dead Man’s Mount has been blown away, which is a good riddance for Colonel Quaritch.  Why, what’s the matter with you, dear?  How pale you look!”

“The gale kept me awake.  I got very little sleep,” answered Ida.

“And no wonder.  Well, my love, you haven’t wished me a merry Christmas yet.  Goodness knows we want one badly enough.  There has not been much merriment at Honham of late years.”

“A merry Christmas to you, father,” she said.

“Thank you, Ida, the same to you; you have got most of your Christmases before you, which is more than I have.  God bless me, it only seems like yesterday since the big bunch of holly tied to the hook in the ceiling there fell down on the breakfast table and smashed all the cups, and yet it is more than sixty years ago.  Dear me! how angry my poor mother was.  She never could bear the crockery to be broken—­it was a little failing of your grandmother’s,” and he laughed more heartily than Ida had heard him do for some weeks.

She made no answer but busied herself about the tea.  Presently, glancing up she saw her father’s face change.  The worn expression came back upon it and he lost his buoyant bearing.  Evidently a new thought had struck him, and she was in no great doubt as to what it was.