"MY LOVE!" CHAPTER I. ON THE BRINK. HERE!-of all places in the world, this! The widow started at the sound of Colonel Moneypenny's voice as if he had been a spirit called from out the infinite by the spell of her desire. She looked up with a frightened and bewildered face. The guard which she usually maintained with so much care was suddenly broken down, and she was as confused and overcome as any other woman might have been. Had she been a mere school-girl met out of bounds, or caught in the act of stealing sacred apples, she could not have been more abashed for the moment than now, when Colonel Moneypenny woke her from her dreaming wrath and took her hand to lead her to his house for shelter. VOL. III. B That shelter was typical. She felt the secret correspondence of her unspoken thoughts with this translated action, and shivered as if the snow-flakes, falling fast, had touched her heart as well as her pallid face. "You are quite pale! The weather is too much for you. You ought not to be out in such a storm," said Colonel Moneypenny with all his best courtesy-his finest mingling of the gentleman's dignity with the lover's tenderness. "Let us make haste up the avenue," he continued. "We shall soon reach the house." "Thank you," said Augusta mechanically. As mechanically she let him take her hand on his arm, and hold it for a moment closely clasped, as they walked rapidly between the leafless chestnuts which swayed and creaked in the wind and caught the snow as it fell in their branches like a net. The wind beat in their faces, and the large densely-frozen flakes stung her soft flesh as they were driven with almost the force of hail. She knew how strange it must seem to the Colonel that she should be out on such a day; stranger still that she should have been met just at his gate. But it was pleasant to feel that she had this shelter before her that she might, if she would, escape once and for ever from all the present storms |