'Never!' Bryda exclaimed, 'not all those hundreds of years ago.'
Mr Barrett smiled.
'Rowley the priest is one and the same with Thomas Chatterton, so some say—not good George Catcott and not Mr Clayfield. I am in no position to decide the question.'
Mr Barrett talked on, discussing Chatterton and his work, and Bryda grew interested in spite of herself, and was almost surprised when the white gates of Rock House came in sight, and the dreaded moment of the interview was close at hand.
How well she recalled her first and only visit there, more than a year before, the courage that then emboldened her to plead her grandfather's cause, the despair with which she turned away and ran down the avenue of firs, with Flick by her side, and had to confess to herself that her errand was in vain. Then arose those questionings which torture us all when we look back on the irrevocable, and she asked herself,—
'If I had never come here that day, if I had never tried to move his hard heart to pity, all this misery and distress might—would have been saved. Oh! why did I ever come, why did I ever do it?'
These and other thoughts of the same kind filled Bryda's mind as she waited in a dull room opposite the library, where Mr Barrett had left her while he went to prepare the Squire for her coming.
The waiting seemed like hours instead of minutes, and yet when the door opened and Mr Barrett beckoned her to follow him she drew back.
'Oh! I cannot—cannot come.'
Then the good doctor took her trembling, cold little hand in his, and said,—