“Now we feel the wind a little,” said Annette.

Fellingham murmured, “Allow me; your shawl is flying loose.”

He laid his hands on her arms, and, pressing her in a tremble, said, “One sign!  It’s not true?  A word!  Do you hate me?”

“Thank you very much, but I am not cold,” she replied and linked herself to her father.

Van Diemen immediately shouted, “For we are jolly boys! for we are jolly boys!  It’s the air on the champagne.  And hang me,” said he, as they entered the grounds of Elba, “if I don’t walk over my property.”

Annette interposed; she stood like a reed in his way.

“No! my Lord!  I’ll see what I sold you for!” he cried.  “I’m an owner of the soil of Old England, and care no more for the title of squire than Napoleon Bonaparty.  But I’ll tell you what, Mr. Hubbard:  your mother was never so astonished at her dog as old Van Diemen would be to hear himself called squire in Old England.  And a convict he was, for he did wrong once, but he worked his redemption.  And the smell of my own property makes me feel my legs again.  And I’ll tell you what, Mr. Hubbard, as Netty calls you when she speaks of you in private:  Mart Tinman’s ideas of wine are pretty much like his ideas of healthy smells, and when I’m bailiff of Crikswich, mind, he’ll find two to one against him in our town council.  I love my country, but hang me if I don’t purify it—­”

Saying this, with the excitement of a high resolve a upon him, Van Diemen bored through a shrubbery-brake, and Fellingham said to Annette: 

“Have I lost you?”

“I belong to my father,” said she, contracting and disengaging her feminine garments to step after him in the cold silver-spotted dusk of the winter woods.

Van Diemen came out on a fish-pond.

“Here you are, young ones!” he said to the pair.  “This way, Fellowman.  I’m clearer now, and it’s my belief I’ve been talking nonsense.  I’m puffed up with money, and have n’t the heart I once had.  I say, Fellowman, Fellowbird, Hubbard—­what’s your right name?—­fancy an old carp fished out of that pond and flung into the sea.  That’s exile!  And if the girl don’t mind, what does it matter?”

“Mr. Herbert Fellingham, I think, would like to go to bed, papa,” said Annette.

“Miss Smith must be getting cold,” Fellingham hinted.

“Bounce away indoors,” replied Van Diemen, and he led them like a bull.

Annette was disinclined to leave them together in the smoking-room, and under the pretext of wishing to see her father to bed she remained with them, though there was a novel directness and heat of tone in Herbert that alarmed her, and with reason.  He divined in hideous outlines what had happened.  He was no longer figuring on easy ice, but desperate at the prospect of a loss to himself, and a fate for Annette, that tossed him from repulsion to incredulity, and so back.

Van Diemen begged him to light his pipe.