CHAPTER ONE.
A SUMMONS.
The snow lay thick round Maxfield Manor.

Though it had been falling scarcely an hour, it had already transfigured the dull old place from a gloomy pile of black and grey into a gleaming vision of white.

It lodged in deep piles in the angles of the rugged gables, and swirled up in heavy drifts against the hall-door.

It sat heavily on the broad ivy- leaves over the porch, and blotted out lawn, path, and flowerbed in a universal pall of white velvet.

The wind-flattened oaks in the park were become tables of snow; and away over the down, to the edge of the cliff itself, the dazzling canopy stretched, making the gulls as they skimmed its surface in troubled flight appear dingy, and the uneasy ocean beyond more than ever grey and leaden.
And the snow was falling still, and promised to make a night of it.