This year the white winter appeared to Charlotte interminable in length.  The days in which it was impossible to go out, full of Sophia’s sewing and little worries and ostentations; the windy, tempestuous nights, that swept the gathering drifts away; the cloudless moonlight nights, full of that awful, breathless quiet that broods in land-locked dales,—­all of them, and all of Nature’s moods, had become inexpressibly, monotonously wearisome before the change came.  But one morning at the end of March, there was a great west wind charged with heavy rains, and in a few hours the snow on all the fells had been turned into rushing floods, that came roaring down from every side into the valley.

              “’Oh, wind! 
      If winter comes, can spring be far behind?’”

quoted Charlotte, as she stood watching the white cascades.

“It will be cuckoo time directly my dear; and the lambs will be bleating on the fells, and the yellow primroses blowing under all the hedges.  I want to see the swallows take the storm on their wings badly this year.  Eh?  What, Charlotte?”

“So do I, father.  I never was so tired of the house before.”

“There’s a bit of a difference lately, I think.  Eh?  What?”

Charlotte looked at him; there was no need to speak.  They both understood and felt the full misery of household changes that are not entirely happy ones; changes that bring unfaithfulness and ingratitude on one side, and resentful, wounded love on the other.  And the worst of it all was, that it might have been so different.  Why had the lovers set themselves apart from the family, had secrets and consultations and interests they refused to share?  How had it happened that Sophia had come to consider her welfare as apart from, and in opposition to, that of the general welfare of Seat-Sandal?  And when this feeling existed, it seemed unjust to Charlotte that they should still expect the whole house and household to be kept in turmoil for the furtherance of their plans, and that every one should be made to contribute to their happiness.

“After all, maybe it is a bit natural,” said the squire with a sad air of apology.  “I have noticed even the robins get angry if you watch them building their nests.”

“But they, at least, build their own nest, father.  The cock-robin does not go to his parents, and the hen robin to her parents, and say, ’Give us all the straw you can, and put it down at the foot of our tree; but don’t dare to peep into the branches, or offer us any suggestions about the nest, or expect to have an opinion about our housekeeping.’  Selfishness spoils every thing, father.  I think if a rose could be selfish it would be hideous.”

“I don’t think a lover would make my Charlotte forget her father and mother, and feel contempt for her home, and all in and about it that she does not want for herself.  Why, a stranger would think that Sophia was never loved by any human heart before!  They would think that she never had been happy before.  Nay, then, she sets more store by the few nick-nacks Julius has given her than all I have bought her for twenty years.  When yonder last bracelet came, she went on as if she had never seen aught of the kind in all her born days.  Yet I have bought her one or two that cost more money, and happen more love, than it did.  Eh?  What, Charlotte?”