Once he turned suddenly to his brother, and said, as if unable to keep silence on what was in his mind, "What was her object ?" Charles shook his head.
"They were hers already!" he went on.

"She would have had them all.

If she had had debts, I would have paid them.

What could her object have been ?" And seemingly, without expecting a reply, he relapsed into silence.
We had left the suburbs now, and were passing through a lonely country.
Here and there a village of straggling cottages met the eye, clustering round their little church.

In places the hedge-rows alone marked the lie of the hidden lanes; in others men were digging out the roads through drifts of snow, and carts and horses were struggling painfully along.