home, but he did not feel then as if he would go a yard out of his way to avoid meeting his enemy.
In the mean time Eleanor was in a mood of peculiar sadness. Her father had not told her of Shuttleworth's letter, and she thought it very likely that this would be her last Christmas in Burley House. And never, in all her memories of the festival, had Christmas-eve seemed so little like it. The servants were middle-aged, and disinclined to pleasure that put the house out of order or made extra work. No one, this year, had thought it worth while to gather holly and haw, or to hang up the pleasant mistletoe branch. A little extra cooking seemed to be the one idea of Christmas left in their sad house, and to Eleanor's mind there was nothing festive in that rite.
In the afternoon she went out to walk off the melancholy that oppressed her. The ground was white and hard, and there were plenty of greens and berries in the park, but, after a moment's thought, she found that she had no heart to gather them. Besides, the park was not a place she liked to walk in, for among its shady groves Anthony had wooed and won her.
