Young Mr. Morelock put his private anxieties aside in deference to the growing terror in the eyes of his young hostess.  He had known her but a short time, meeting her only as his St. John’s-in-Paradise duties gave him opportunity; but from the first she had stood to him as a type of womanly serenity and fortitude.  Yet now she was visibly terrified and distressed, and the clergyman wondered.  She had never before given him the impression that she belonged to the storm-fearing group of women.

“Can’t we have a little music, Miss Ardea?” he asked, after a while, hoping to suggest a comforting diversion.

“You will have to excuse me,” she said, in a low voice.  “I—­I think I am not quite well.”

Cousin Euphrasia overheard the admission and recommended the quiet of up stairs, drawn curtains and possets.  But Ardea let the suggestion fall to the ground, and a little while afterward Morelock surprised her at her forenoon occupation of going from window to window, with the look of distress rising to sharp agony when the overladen trees began to groan and crack under the crushing ice burden.

“What is it, Miss Dabney?” he said, out of the heart of sympathy, when he came on her alone in the library.  “Is there anything I can do?”

“Yes,” she rejoined quickly.  “The moment the storm subsides even a little, I must go out.  My excuse will be a desire to see, a thirst for fresh air—­anything; and you must abet me if there is any opposition.”

“But I thought you were afraid of the storm,” he interposed.

“I?  I should be out in it this minute if I thought grandfather wouldn’t be tempted to lock me in my room for proposing such a thing.  And I must go before dark, whatever happens.”

The young man from New England was a gentleman born.  He neither asked questions nor raised objections.

“Of course, you may command me utterly,” he said warmly.  “I’ll help; and I’ll go with you, if you will let me.”

“That is what I want,” she said frankly.  “Will you propose it?  I—­I can’t explain, even to my cousin.”

“Certainly,” he agreed; and a little later, when the temperature dropped the necessary three degrees and the rain stopped, he calmly announced his intention of taking Miss Ardea out to see the devastation which, by this time, was beginning to be apparent on all sides.

There was a protest, as a matter of course, quite shrill on the part of Miss Euphrasia, but not absolutely prohibitory on the Major’s.  Morelock saw to it that his charge was well wrapped; in her haste and agitation Ardea would have overlooked the common precautions.  They used the side door for a sally-port, and were soon slipping and sliding almost helplessly across the lawn.  Walking was next to impossible, and the crashes of falling branches and trees came like the detonations of quick-firing guns.  The minister locked arms with the determined young woman at his side and picked the way for her as he could.