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260 Countess told Benvolio all this one day as he sat with her in her boudoir, in the fire-light, during the hour that precedes dinner. She had said more than once that he must decamp—that she must go and dress for dinner; but neither of them had moved. She did not invite him to go with her to the country; she only watched him as he sat gazing with a frown at the firelight—the crackling light of the great logs which had been cut in the Countess's bear-haunted forests. At last she rose impatiently, and fairly turned him out. After he had gone she stood for a moment looking at the fire with the tip of her foot on the fender. She had not to wait long; he came back within the minute—came back and begged her leave to go with her to the country to skate with her in the crystal moonlight and dance with her to the sound of the village fiddles. It hardly matters in what terms his petition was granted: the notable point is that he made it. He was her only companion, and when they were established in the castle the hospitality extended to the resident gentry was less abundant than had been promised. Benvolio, however, did not complain of the absence of it, because, for the week or so, he was passionately in love with his hostess. They took long sleigh-rides and drank deep of the poetry of winter. The blue shadows on the snow, the cold amber lights in the west, the leafless twigs against the snow-charged sky, all gave