Two weeks before Christmas Alice came home, bright as a rose. She
talked of a thousand events, large and small. Glenfernie listened,
smiled, asked questions, praised her, and said it was good to have
brightness in the house.
"Aye, it is!" she answered. "How grave and old you and Mr. Strickland
and the books and the hall and Bran look!"
"It's heigho! for Jamie, isn't it?" asked Alexander. "Winter makes us
look old. Wait till springtime!"
That evening she waylaid Strickland. "What is the matter with
Alexander?"
"I don't know."
"He looks five years older. He looks as though he had been through
wars."
"Perhaps he has. I don't know what it is," said Strickland, soberly.
"Do you think," said Alice--"do you think he could have had--oh,
somewhere out in the world!--a love-affair, and it ended badly? She
died, or there was a rival, or something like that, and he has just
heard of it?"
"You have been reading novels," said Strickland. "And yet--!"
That night, seeing from his own window the light in the keep, he
turned to his bed with the thought of the havoc of love. Lying there
with open eyes he saw in procession Unhappy Love. He lay long awake,
but at last he turned and addressed himself to sleep. "He's a strong
climber! Whatever it is, maybe he'll climb out of it."
But in the keep, Alexander, sitting by the fire with lowered head and
hanging hands, saw not the time when he would climb out of it.
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