"Well, she isn't that," he said, finally.

"But she's a very sweet, nice, exceptional girl." The next morning he breakfasted alone, as usual.

It was snowing with a fine-flaked desultoriness just sufficient to make the woodland gray, without ever achieving whiteness.

There was not a single letter for Fitzpiers, only a medical circular and a weekly newspaper.
To sit before a large fire on such mornings, and read, and gradually acquire energy till the evening came, and then, with lamp alight, and feeling full of vigor, to pursue some engrossing subject or other till the small hours, had hitherto been his practice.

But to-day he could not settle into his chair.