Christine felt that he had the better of her, but she said firmly: 

“Are you teaching this subject, or am I?”

“Certainly you can’t think you are.  But if you say so, I’ll have a try.”

Not sorry to create a diversion, Christine looked about her, and was more diverted from the subject in hand than she had expected to be.

They were on the wrong road.  What with the snow and the fact that she had been so busy talking that she really had no idea how far they had been, it took her a moment to orient herself anew.  She told him with a conscience-struck look.

“And you,” said Riatt, “who do not even know the road to your own house, were volunteering to pilot me through an emotional crisis.”

Even a suggestion of adverse criticism was unpleasant to Miss Fenimer.  She was not accustomed to it; and she answered with some sharpness: 

“Yes, but the road is real, whereas I understand your embarrassment through the attentions of ladies is purely fictitious.”

Riatt wondered how fictitious, but he turned the cutter about in obedience to her commands.  The horse started forward even more gaily, under the impression that he was going home.  But for the drivers, the change was not so agreeable.  A high wind had come up, the snow was falling faster, and the light of the winter afternoon, already beginning to fade, was obscured by high, dark, silver-edged banks of clouds.

“Upon my word,” said Riatt, “I think we had better go back.”

“It’s only a little way from here,” Christine answered, trying hard to think how far it really was.  She did want to get her father’s coat, but she was not indifferent to the triumph of making Riatt late for dinner, and leaving Nancy Almar throughout the afternoon with no companion but Wickham or Jack Ussher.

The wind cut their faces, the horse pulled and pranced, the gaiety had gone out of their little expedition.  They drove on a mile or so, and then Riatt stopped the horse.

“We’ve got to go back, Miss Fenimer,” he said firmly.

“Oh, please not, Mr. Riatt; we are almost there, and,” she added with a fine sense of filial obligation, “I really feel I must do as my father asked me.”

Riatt felt inclined to point out that she, with her muff held up to her face, was not making the greatest sacrifice to the ideal of duty.

“Have you any very clear idea where your house is?” he asked.  His tone was not flattering, and Christine was quick to feel it.

“Do I know where I live five months of the year?” she returned.  “Of course I do.  It’s just over this next hill.”

The afternoon was turning out so perversely that she would hardly have been surprised to find that the house had disappeared from its accustomed place.  But as they came over the crest, there it was, in a hollow between two hills, looking as summer houses do in winter, like a forlorn toy left out in the snow.