What a bitter cold night it was!--yet the keen north wind felt pleasant and refreshing on my fevered forehead. There had been a sprinkling of snow too since sunset, and the open surface of the Park was completely whitened over--how cheerless and desolate it looked! I hadn't the heart to stay very long at the window; it reminded me too much of the pleasant evenings one short week ago. I felt weary and desponding, and drowsy with uncertainty and unhappiness, so I was in the act of shutting down the window, when I saw a dark figure moving rapidly across the snow in the direction of the house. Not for an instant did I mistake it for a deer, or a gamekeeper, or a poacher, or a housebreaker. From the moment I set eyes on it, something told me it must be Frank Lovell; and though I shrunk back that he might not see me, I watched him with painful anxiety and a beating heart. He seemed to know his way quite well. He came straight to the moat, felt his way cautiously for a step or two, and finding the ice would bear him, crossed at once, and took up a position under my window, not twenty feet from where I was standing.
He must have seen my shadow across the candle-light, for he whispered my name.
"Miss Coventry--Kate! Only one word." What could I do? Poor fellow! he had walked all that distance in the cold and the snow only for one word--and this was the man I had been doubting and misjudging all day! Why, of course, though I know it was very wrong and very improper and all that, of course I spoke to him, and listened to what he had to say, and carried on a long conversation, the effect of which was somewhat ludicrous, in consequence of the distance between the parties, question and answer requiring to be _shouted_, as it were, in a whisper. The night too was clouding over, more snow was falling, and it was getting so dark I could not see Frank, even at the distance of twelve or fourteen feet, and it could not have been much more between my bedroom window and the ground.
"Did you get my note?" said he with sundry complimentary expressions.
"Here's the answer," was my practical reply, as I dropped my own missive into the darkness.
I know he caught it, because--because--_I heard him kiss it_. At that moment I was aware of a step in the passage, a hand on my door. Down went my window in a twinkling, out went my candles--the wick of the second one would keep glimmering like a light far off at sea--and in came Aunt Horsingham, clad in flannel attire, with a wondrous head-dress, the like of which I have never beheld before or since, just as I popped into bed, and buried myself beneath the clothes as if I had been asleep for hours.