In England a heroine might have wound up such sentimental exercises with gazing out on the moonlit scene; but nine degrees below zero was unfavourable for the wooing of Diana.  The “cold light of stars” was no poetical figure, and Bluebell, frozen back to the prosaic, piled up the stove, and crept into bed, where her waking dreams soon merged into sleeping ones.

CHAPTER V.

A WOODLAND WALK.

  I hope, pretty maid, you won’t take it amiss,
  If I tell you my reason for asking you this,
  I would see you safe home (now the swain was in love),
  Of such a companion if you would approve. 
  Your offer, kind shepherd, is civil, I own,
  But I see no great danger in going alone;
  Nor yet can I hinder, the road being free
  For one as another, for you as for me.

It was Sunday afternoon.  Bluebell was on her way to the Maples, and had not proceeded far when she observed a Robinson Crusoe-looking figure in one of those grotesque fur caps and impossible hooded blankets that the fashionable Briton in Canada so fondly affects.  She was speculating idly upon whom it could be.

“Not Mr. Gordon, though the ‘Fool’s-cap’ is like his; and Major Simeon has one of those.  Oh, Captain Du Meresq!”

She bowed rather undecidedly, and then moved on abruptly.

But Bertie did not pass by.

“Are you returning?” asked he.  “They can’t get on without you.  Freddy has dropped a cinder into his nurse’s tea, and set fire to the straw in the cat’s basket.”

Bluebell laughed shyly.

“I have been to see mamma.  Do not let me bring you out of your way, Captain Du Meresq,”—­for he had turned back with her.

“Oh, I was only going for a walk,” said Bertie, innocently,—­a harmless amusement that, without any other object, he was simply incapable of undertaking.  “Hadn’t I better see you home; there’s a brute of a dog down there who sprang out at me!  I broke my stick across his head, and then, of course, I had to apologize, being disarmed.”

“I know that fierce dog.  He belongs to a cabman; but I always speak to him, and he never attacks me.”

“Even a lion itself would flee from a maid in the pride of her purity,” laughed Bertie.  “But, Miss Leigh, must we positively go shivering across this bleak desert again?—­isn’t there some sheltered way through the wood?”

“There certainly is; but it is three miles round, and, I dare say, full of drifts.”

“Never mind, all the better fun.  Up this way?”

“Oh, but isn’t it late?  I think they will be expecting me before.”

“There’s nobody at home, if that’s all,” said Bertie.  “They have gone to the Cathedral, and most likely will turn into tea at the Van Calmonts.”

The scrambling walk was a temptation, the common hideous and cold.

“We must walk very quick, then.”