those grim college rooms, which grew less ghostly now that she knew
them better. Already she was getting a little used to her new home, her
formal dignities, and her handsome clothes. It was a small thing to
think of, perhaps, and yet, as she walked across the college
quadrangles, remembering how often she had shivered in her thin shawl
along these very paths, the rich fur cloak felt soft and warm, like her
husband's goodness and unfailing love.

As she stepped with her light, firm tread across the crinkling snow, she
was--not unhappy. In her still dwelt that wellspring of healthy vitality,
which always, under all circumstances, responds more or less to the
influence of the cheerful morning, the stainless childhood, of the day.
No wonder the "reading man" who had been so insensible to the
picturesque in nature, turned his weary eyes to look after her, or that a
bevy of freshmen, rushing wildly out of chapel, with their surplices
flying behind them like a flock of white--geese?--should have stopped
to stare, a little more persistently than gentlemen ought, at the solitary
lady, who was walking where she had a perfect right to walk, and at an
hour when she could scarcely be suspected of promenading either to
observe or to attract observation. But Christian went right on, with
perfect composure. She knew she was handsome, for she had been told
so once; but the knowledge had afterward become only pain. Now, she
was indifferent to her looks--at least as indifferent as any womanly
woman ever can be, or ought to be. Still, it vexed her a little that these
young men should presume to stare, and she was glad she was not
walking in Saint Bede's, and that they were not the men of her own
college.

For already she began to appropriate "our college"--those old walls,
under the shadow of which all her future life must pass. As she entered