This good time, this lucid interval, so to speak, usually came to her in the morning, when she took her early walk in the familiar places; for to Christian familiarity only made things more dear.  Already she was beginning to find her own nooks, and to go about her own ways in those grim college rooms, which grew less ghostly now that she knew them better.  Already she was getting a little used to her new home, her formal dignities, and her handsome clothes.  It was a small thing to think of, perhaps, and yet, as she walked across the college quadrangles, remembering how often she had shivered in her thin shawl along these very paths, the rich fur cloak felt soft and warm, like her husband’s goodness and unfailing love.

As she stepped with her light, firm tread across the crinkling snow, she was—­not unhappy.  In her still dwelt that wellspring of healthy vitality, which always, under all circumstances, responds more or less to the influence of the cheerful morning, the stainless childhood, of the day.  No wonder the “reading man” who had been so insensible to the picturesque in nature, turned his weary eyes to look after her, or that a bevy of freshmen, rushing wildly out of chapel, with their surplices flying behind them like a flock of white—­geese?—­should have stopped to stare, a little more persistently than gentlemen ought, at the solitary lady, who was walking where she had a perfect right to walk, and at an hour when she could scarcely be suspected of promenading either to observe or to attract observation.  But Christian went right on, with perfect composure.  She knew she was handsome, for she had been told so once; but the knowledge had afterward become only pain.  Now, she was indifferent to her looks—­at least as indifferent as any womanly woman ever can be, or ought to be.  Still, it vexed her a little that these young men should presume to stare, and she was glad she was not walking in Saint Bede’s, and that they were not the men of her own college.

For already she began to appropriate “our college”—­those old walls, under the shadow of which all her future life must pass.  As she entered the narrow gateway of Saint Beck’s, and walked round its chilly cloisters, to the Lodge door, she tried not to remember that she had ever thought of life as any thing different from this, or had ever planned an existence of boundless enjoyment, freedom, and beauty, travel in foreign countries, seeing of mountains, cities, pictures, palaces, hearing of grand music, and mingling in brilliant society—­a phantasmagoria of delight which had visited her fancy once—­was it only her fancy?—­and vanished in a moment, as completely as the shadows projected on the wall.  And here she was, the wife of the Master of Saint Bede’s.

“I was right—­I was right,” she said to herself in the eagerness of a vain assurance.  “And whether I was right or wrong matters not now.  I must bear it—­I must do my duty—­and I will!”