“Are you ready, Max?” said Laura, rather sharply.

“Laura expects every man to do his duty,” murmured Nancy, without looking up.

Riatt expressed himself as entirely ready.  Ussher lent him a fur cap and heavy gloves, warned him about the charmingly uncertain character of the horse; he and Christine were tucked into the sleigh, and they were off.

The snow, as Laura had said, did not seem to amount to much, the wind was behind them, the horse fast, the roads well packed.  Riatt glanced down at his lovely companion, and felt his spirits rising.  He smiled at her and she smiled back.

“I do hope you really feel like that,” she said, “not sorry, I mean, to go on this expedition.  Because it was extremely wicked of me to forget my father’s coat, and this was obviously the occasion to make amends, but there was no one to take me—­”

“No one to take you?”

“Oh, I suppose one of the grooms might have driven me over, but I should have hated that.  There was no one else.  Jack is much too selfish, and I wouldn’t have gone with that Wickham person for anything in the world, even if he had ever driven a sleigh, which I am sure he hasn’t.”

“And how about Mr. Hickson?” Riatt asked.  “Wasn’t he a possibility?”

“What has Nancy Almar told you about her brother and me?”

“Nothing but what he told me himself in every look and word—­that he loves you.”

Christine sighed.

He smiled at her.

“And you’re glad of it,” he said.

“You mean I care for him?”

“I don’t know anything about that, but you’re glad he cares for you.”

“You’re utterly mistaken.”

“How would you feel if another woman came and took him away from you to-morrow?”

“Took him away from me?” cried Christine, in a tone of surprise that made Riatt laugh aloud.

“That’s the wonderful thing about the so-called weaker sex,” he said.  “Saying ‘no’ seems to have no terrors to them at all.  The timidest girl will refuse a man with no more trouble and anxiety than she would expend on refusing a dinner invitation; whereas men, with all their vaunted courage, are absolutely at the mercy of a determined woman.  I have a friend who has just married a girl—­whom he three times explicitly refused—­only because she asked him to.”

Miss Fenimer looked at him thoughtfully.

“Surely you exaggerate,” she said.

He shook his head sadly.

“I wish I did,” he returned, “but I assure you that is the great secret—­that any man would rather marry any woman than refuse her to her face.  You see, no graceful way for a man to say ‘no’ has ever been discovered.”

“Why, you poor defenseless creatures!” said Christine.  “I’ll teach you some ways immediately.  I couldn’t bear to think of your going about a prey to the first woman who proposed to you.  Let us begin our lessons immediately.  Have I your attention?”