"Ah, but not for me," young Scarlett had answered. "You don't expect me to write that kind of thing? It isn't in me. No, I want to rhyme about some little picture in an old-fashioned setting—Pamela, or Dorothy, or—or Ursula, walking between clipped hedges, or looking at an old sun-dial, or stopping by a basin rimmed with mossy stone to feed the gold fish. Or dreaming—and she must not be a Girton young woman—I couldn't imagine a Girton young woman's dreams!"
And so the argument ended in laughter. If only it could have been Adrian Scarlett instead of Reynold Harding in the dining-room that night! Barbara's apprehensions would all have vanished in a moment. But Mr. Scarlett was gone, ("He might have said good-bye," thought Barbara,) and the pleasant time was gone with him. The window was closed and shuttered, and the honeysuckle, a tangle of grey stalks, shivered in the wind outside.
She tried to amuse herself with Good Words again, but failed. Then she went to the piano, but had no better success there. She was listening with such strained attention, that to her ears the music was only distracting and importunate noise. As a last resource she bethought her of a half-finished novel which she had left in her bed-room. She had not intended to go on with it till Monday, but she would, and she ran up-stairs with guilty eagerness to fetch it.
She was coming back along the passage with the book in her hand, when she heard the opening and shutting of doors below, and the quick fall of steps. In another moment Reynold Harding came springing up the wide stairs to where she stood. There was a lamp at the head of the staircase, and as he passed out of the dusk into its light, she could see his angry eyes, and she knew the veins which stood out upon his forehead, looking as if the blood in them were black.
He saw her just before he reached the top, and stopped short. For a moment neither spoke, then he drew a long breath, and laid his hand upon the balustrade.
"Miss Strange," he said, "I'm going away."
Barbara hardly knew what she had expected or feared, but this took her by surprise.
"Going? Not now?" she exclaimed in amazement.
"Not to-night—it is too late. I must stop for the night. I can't help myself. But the first thing to-morrow morning."
"Oh, why?"