I shivered to myself with pleasure and thanked sincerely the slender girl that brought hot tea to me and unwrapped my long furs. It was not my friend's daughter--the youngest of these was now happily married, and she would have been alone, were it not for the girls that she kept with her, training and guiding them into some of the wisdom and charm that distinguished her gracious self--a sort of unchartered school, where less gifted mothers sought eagerly to install their daughters.
As she accepted the services of two of these, and dispatched by a messenger some comforts to be sent to the suffering creature we had just returned from visiting, I lingered by the window and saw the first shadowy flakes of a new storm. The wind rose quickly to a howl, an icy branch tapped at the pane; we had narrowly escaped a dangerous home-coming. I could not resist a somewhat pettish complaint.
"Don't you think," I began, "that you have earned a rest from these expeditions, these insistent girls of yours, this constant responsibility? You are magnificently strong and well--yes; but even your vitality has its limits and too many people hang upon you, my dear! Do you shake us all off for a while and do something for yourself, your own pleasure and relaxation. Surely at your age you deserve rest! Your own have ceased to need you--why invite others?"
She looked strangely at me and in the dusk I saw her face white.
"There!" I went on, "you have harrowed yourself unnecessarily with that poor creature's pain and want--surely you could have sent money? There are people whose sole business it is to attend to such cases, and their nerves are coarser than yours--they are not so wrung by what is daily work to them."
At that moment a great fall of snow slid from one of the sloping roofs, so that the air was white before us. It swept to the ground with a dense, rushing crash and heaped itself into fantastic towers and walls; close by a red lantern shone out; the wind moaned sadly.
"Look! look!" she cried, one hand at her side, "the Dunes again! Surely you see that Castle, too? Or is it the sign--Oh, I am ready! Believe me, I am ready!"
"Those are no dunes, my dear friend, only black shadows on the snow of your own lands," I assured her, "and it is one of your own men with a lantern going on your own errand. It is the fallen snow that takes those strange spire-like shapes--no castle. This wind wails too much for your nerves. Look in, at the fire and the warm hall."