Mr. Hayes smiled a little unwillingly. He did not really require respect for the Rothwell sea-sickness, but it hardly pleased him that the young fellow should scoff at his ancestry, just when it had gained him admission to Mitchelhurst Place. "Bad taste," he said to himself, and he returned abruptly to the money-making uncle. "I suppose Mr. Harding has a son to come after him?"
"Yes, there's one son," Reynold replied, with a contemptuous intonation.
"And does he take to the business?"
"I don't know much about that. I fancy he wants to begin at the yachting end, anyhow."
"Only one son." Mr. Hayes glanced at young Harding as if a question were on his lips; but the other's face did not invite it, and the subject dropped. There was a pause, and then the elder man began to talk of some Roman remains which had been discovered five miles from Mitchelhurst. Reynold crossed his long legs, balanced himself idly, and listened with dreary acquiescence.
It was some time before the Roman remains were disposed of and they rejoined Barbara. They startled her out of her uncle's big easy-chair, where she was half-lying, half-sitting, with all her black draperies about her, too much absorbed in a novel to hear their approach. Harding, on the threshold, caught a glimpse of the nestling attitude, the parted lips, the hand that propped her head, before Miss Strange was on her feet and ready for her company.
Mr. Hayes, stirring his coffee, demanded music. He liked it a little for its own sake, but more just then because it would take his companion off his hands. He was tired of entertaining this silent young man, who stood, cup in hand, on the rug, frowning at the portraits of his forefathers, and he sent Barbara to the piano with the certainty that Harding would follow her. As soon as he saw them safely at the other end of the room he dropped with a sigh of relief into the chair which she had quitted, and took up his book.
The girl, meanwhile, turned over her music and questioned Reynold. He did not sing?—did not play? No; and he understood very little, but he liked to listen. He turned the pages for her, once or twice too fast, generally much too slowly, never at the right moment. Then Barbara began to play something which she knew by heart, and he stood a little aside, with his moody face softening, and his downward-glancing eyes following her fingers over the keys, as if she were weaving the strands of some delicate tissue. When she stopped, rested one hand on the music-stool on which she sat, and turned from the piano to hear what her uncle wished for next, he saw, as she leaned backward, the pure curve of her averted cheek, and the black lace and amber beads about her softly-rounded throat.
"Oh, I know that by heart, too!" she exclaimed.