“I never thought goodness was a charm,” she objected.

“And that’s just what I hope you will never find out.”

She laughed.  “I don’t believe there’s much danger,” she said.  “I think I shall go on being wicked and mercenary and selfish to the day of my death, and probably getting everything I want.”

“I hope not.  I mean I hope you won’t get what you want.”

“Oh, why are you so unkind?”

“Because I shall want to use you as a terrible example to my grandchildren.”

“Do you think you will remember me as long as that?”

“I feel no doubt about it.”

She smiled.  “It seems rather hard that I have to come to a bad end just to oblige your horrid little grandchildren,” she said.  “As a matter of fact, I shall probably run them down in my motor as they go to work with their little dinner-pails.  And as I take their mangled forms to the hospital, I’ll murmur:  ’Riatt, Riatt, I think I once knew a half-hearted reformer of that name.’”

“You think you, too, will remember as long as that?”

“I have an excellent memory for trifles,” she returned, and rose yawning.  “And now I think I’ll go to bed—­unless there’s anything more you want to know about our tribal customs.  Are you going to write a nature book about us:  ’Head-hunting Among the Idle Rich’?”

“‘The Cannibals of the Atlantic Coast’ is the title,” he answered as he gave her a candle.  “I’ll leave your breakfast for you in the morning before I go.  And by the way, if some one comes to rescue you, don’t go off and leave me in the tool-house, will you?”

“Oh, I’m not really as bad as that.”

He shook his head as if he didn’t feel sure.

She went away well satisfied with her evening’s work.  There had been something extremely flattering in his mingled horror and amusement at her candid revelations.  Holding up the candle she looked at her own image in her mirror.  “I wonder,” she thought, “if that young man knows what a dangerous frame of mind he’s in?”

He had some suspicion, for as he dragged a mattress downstairs and laid it before the kitchen fire, he kept repeating to himself, as if in a last effort to rouse some moral enthusiasm:  “What a band of cut-throats they are!”

Christine woke the next morning to find the sun shining on an unbroken sheet of snow.  The storm had passed in the night.  She dressed quickly and went down to find the kitchen empty, and the track of footsteps in the snow leading away in the direction of the tool-house.  Her coffee was bubbling and slices of bacon neatly laid in the frying pan were ready for cooking.  She thought he might have stayed and cooked it for her.

“No one will come as early as this,” she thought, plaintively.

But hardly had she finished her simple meal, when the sound of sleigh bells reached her ears, and running to the window she saw that Ussher and Hickson in a two horse sleigh were driving down the slope.