Thomas Wingfold. Volume III by George MacDonald

George Bascombe, when he went to Paris, had no thought of deserting / Helen. But he had good ground for fearing that it might be ruinous / both to Lingard and himself to undertake his defence. From Paris he / wrote often to Helen, and she replied -- not so often, yet often / enough to satisfy him; and as soon as she was convinced that Leopold / could not recover, she let him know, whereupon he instantly began / his preparations for returning.

Before he came, the weather had changed once more. It was now cold, / and the cold had begun at once to tell upon the invalid. There are / some natures to which cold, moral, spiritual, or physical, is / lethal, and Lingard's was of the class. When the dying leaves began / to shiver in the breath of the coming winter, the very brightness of / the sun to look gleamy, and nature to put on the unfriendly aspect / of a world not made for living in but for shutting out -- when all / things took the turn of reminding man that his life lay not in them, / Leopold began to shrink and withdraw. He could not face the ghastly / persistence of the winter, which would come, let all the souls of / the summer-nations shrink and protest as they might; let them creep / shivering to Hades; he would have his day.