This afternoon she was quite idle, however. Humphrey was off attending a meeting in the neighbouring town, and it was snowing heavily.
“The most daring visitor must jib to-day!” thought Gwen, “I shall claim it unreservedly, and I must have open air for this business.”
Her maid naturally thought her mad; that mattered little. She was dressed and right out in the storm in ten minutes from the time she had taken her resolution.
An old hound of Strange’s that had taken to her from the first, was as much scandalized as the maid, but he was not the one to be outdone by any slip of a girl. He gathered up his great legs, shook himself with a drowsy grunt, and followed her with a half-contemptuous curiosity.
The Park had a certain beauty of its own, it was big and, if its undulations were insignificant, their curves were soft and full, and the timber was magnificent and well-placed; the whole looked well under snow. The great dull red-brick house stood out in fine contrast to the dazzling white of the earth, and the glittering green of the clump of pines that flanked its left wing, and from which the fierce wind kept stripping the snow wreaths, that tried hard to nestle in the shelter of the cosy branches.
When Gwen got beyond the terraces to a turn in the drive, she could see the sluggish stream that ran through a mile or so of the Park, turned into a torrent, rushing and foaming onward in its brilliant course.
She stopped in the very teeth of the storm, and looked round her with a radiant face.
“The whole place is transformed!” she thought. “It generally reminds me of a great soft white cow, chewing the cud knee-deep in water in the shade of a full silky beech, it has all that beast’s ample, contented, intolerably depressing beauty; but to-day it is grand, glorious, like anything but a cow, the heart of it is alive and throbbing under that driving storm, it is the birth of passion in that suave smooth green sod, and the snow is the christening robe. Oh, I wish it were always like this!”
She threw off her veil and turned round, that the blast might strike every part of her.
“It’s magnificent!” she shouted in her excitement, “and—after all, passion’s a wonderful thing!”
She laughed as she bent to the blast. “But it’s amazing the way it subsides without leaving a token of its presence—what’s a broken bough or two as a witness to these wonders? In two days, in less, this place will be as uncompromisingly smooth and smug as ever. Ah, passion is a fraud then, or else it requires explanation!”