Marjorie Bowen

“ He skated between the fields, the windmills, and the houses.
He would lose everything; let him consider that. People would turn their backs on him—even Elizabeth. He would have to leave Delft.
Perhaps his cousin, the man whom he had wronged and whose memory he would right, if he confessed, might have said a good word for him, but, he being dead, there was no other, Floris reflected, with an unreasonable sneer. ”

“ Floris skated through field after field, where the canal was edged by spears of broken grass, and low bushes, bearing glittering lines of snow, bent over the frozen tow-path, and beyond this nothing but the straight line of the land merging into the mist. ”

“ A passer-by on the other side of the canal saw just Mynheer Floris Van Heenvliet going home; Floris himself, as he passed under the portico, was thinking that nothing would ever be the same again after he had said what he was going to say.
He took off his cap and shook the snowflakes from it, and got out of his coat.
Anna, the housekeeper, came down the black-and-white tiled hall.
"It is beginning to snow again," she said. "I am glad you have come back. You have been gone a long time."
Floris gave her his cap, coat, and skates.
"Where is my uncle?" he asked. ”