the wind and rain it was a toil to move. Poor Miss Frost, who had
seemed almost to blossom again in the long hot days, regaining a
free cheerfulness that amounted almost to liveliness, and who even
caused a sort of scandal by her intimacy with a rather handsome but
common stranger, an insurance agent who had come into the place with
a good, unused tenor voice--now she wilted again. She had given the
rather florid young man tea in her room, and had laboured away at
his fine, metallic voice, correcting him and teaching him and
laughing with him and spending really a remarkable number of hours
alone with him in her room in Woodhouse--for she had given up
tramping the country, and had hired a music-room in a quiet street,
where she gave her lessons. And the young man had hung round, and
had never wanted to go away. They would prolong their tête-à-tête
and their singing on till ten o'clock at night, and Miss Frost would
return to Manchester House flushed and handsome and a little shy,
while the young man, who was common, took on a new boldness in the
streets. He had auburn hair, high colouring, and a rather
challenging bearing. He took on a new boldness, his own estimate of
himself rose considerably, with Miss Frost and his trained voice to
justify him. He was a little insolent and condescending to the
natives, who disliked him. For their lives they could not imagine
what Miss Frost could find in him. They began even to dislike her,
and a pretty scandal was started about the pair, in the pleasant
room where Miss Frost had her piano, her books, and her flowers. The
scandal was as unjust as most scandals are. Yet truly, all that
summer and autumn Miss Frost had a new and slightly aggressive
cheerfulness and humour. And Manchester House saw little of her,
comparatively.
And then, at the end of September, the young man was removed by his
Insurance Company to another district. And at the end of October set
in the most abominable and unbearable weather, deluges of rain and
north winds, cutting the tender, summer-unfolded people to pieces.
Miss Frost wilted at once. A silence came over her. She shuddered
when she had to leave the fire. She went in the morning to her room,
and stayed there all the day, in a hot, close atmosphere, shuddering
when her pupils brought the outside weather with them to her.
She was always subject to bronchitis. In November she had a bad
bronchitis cold. Then suddenly one morning she could not get up.
Alvina went in and found her semi-conscious.
The girl was almost mad. She flew to the rescue. She despatched her
father instantly for the doctor, she heaped the sticks in the
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