All this was sad—­very sad.  There were good and noble qualities in the hearts of both.  They were not narrow-minded and selfish, like so many of your placid, accommodating, calculating people, but generous in their feelings and broad in their sympathies.  They had ideals of life that went reaching out far beyond themselves.  Yes, it was sad to see two such hearts beating against and bruising each other, instead of taking the same pulsation.  But there seemed to be no help for them.  Irene’s jealous guardianship of her freedom, her quick temper, pride and self-will made the position of her husband so difficult that it was almost impossible for him to avoid giving offence.

The summer and fall passed away without any serious rupture between the sensitive couple, although there had been seasons of great unhappiness to both.  Irene had been up to Ivy Cliff many times to visit her father, and now she was, beginning to urge his removal to the city for the winter; but Mr. Delancy, who had never given his full promise to this arrangement, felt less and less inclined to leave his old home as the season advanced.  Almost from boyhood he had lived there, and his habits were formed for rural instead of city life.

He pictured the close streets, with their rows of houses, that left for the eye only narrow patches of ethereal blue, and contrasted this with the broad winter landscape, which for him had always spread itself out with a beauty rivaled by no other season, and his heart failed him.

The brief December days were on them, and Irene grew more urgent.

“Come, dear father,” she wrote.  “I think of you, sitting all alone at Ivy Cliff, during these long evenings, and grow sad at heart in sympathy with your loneliness.  Come at once.  Why linger a week or even a day longer?  We have been all in all to each other these many years, and ought not to be separated now.”

But Mr. Delancy was not ready to exchange the pure air and widespreading scenery of the Highlands for a city residence, even in the desolate winter, and so wrote back doubtingly.  Irene and her husband then came up to add the persuasion of their presence at Ivy Cliff.  It did not avail, however.  The old man was too deeply wedded to his home.

“I should be miserable in New York,” he replied to their earnest entreaties; “and it would not add to your happiness to see me going about with a sober, discontented face, or to be reminded every little while that if you had left me to my winter’s hibernation I would have been a contented instead of a dissatisfied old man.  No, no, my children; Ivy Cliff is the best place for me.  You shall come up and spend Christmas here, and we will have a gay season.”

There was no further use in argument.  Mr. Delancy would have his way; and he was right.

Irene and her husband went back to the city, with a promise to spend Christmas at the old homestead.

Two weeks passed.  It was the twentieth of December.  Without previous intimation, Irene came up alone to Ivy Cliff, startling her father by coming in suddenly upon him one dreary afternoon, just as the leaden sky began to scatter down the winter’s first offering of snow.