"You did?"
"Yes, I was thinking of it all day. Oh how I wish I had done it! But I wasn't sure you would like it—I didn't know. I thought perhaps it might seem"—she faltered—"might seem as if I thought that you——"
"I see!" Reynold answered in his harshest voice. "I needn't have told you just now that I had a devil of a temper!"
Barbara drew herself up against the wall with her head thrown back, and gazed blankly at him.
"Oh, don't be afraid!" he said with a laugh. "I'm not going to hit you!"
"Don't talk like that!" she cried. "Oh! there's uncle coming!" and turning she fled back to her own room. Harding heard the steps below, and he also went off, not quite so hurriedly, but with long strides, and vanished into the shadows. The innocent cause of this alarm crossed the hall, from the drawing-room to the study, banging the doors after him, and the lamplight fell on the deserted stairs.
Harding struck a light and flung himself into a chair. Barbara's words and his own mocking laughter seemed still to be in the air about him. The silence and loneliness bewildered him, he could not realise that his chance of speech had escaped him, and that Barbara's entreaty must remain unanswered. Her timid self-reproach had stabbed him to the heart. That the poor little girl should have trembled and been silent, lest he should speak harshly, and then that she should blame herself so bitterly for her cowardice—it was a sudden revelation to Reynold of the ugliness of those black moods of his. One might have pictured the evil power broken by the shock of this discovery and leaving shame-stricken patience in its place, or, at least, one might have imagined strenuous resolutions for the days to come. But Reynold's very tenderness was mixed with wrath; he cursed the something in himself, yet not himself, which had frightened Barbara, he could not feel that he was answerable. That she, of all the world, should judge him so, filled his soul with a burning sense of wrong.
"How could you think it?" he pleaded with her in his thoughts, "my dear, how could you think it?" And yet he did not blame her. Ah God! what a bitter, miserable wretch he had been his whole life through! Why had no woman ever taught him how to be gentle and good? He blamed neither Barbara nor himself, but a cruel fate.
It was not till late, when he had collected his things, and made all ready for his departure in the morning, that he remembered that he would not see her again, that he absolutely could not so much as speak a word to make amends. He must cross the threshold of the old house as early as he possibly could, his angry pride would not allow him a moment's delay, and what chance was there that she would be up and dressed by then? It was maddening to think of the long slow hours which they would pass under the same roof, each hour gliding away with its many minutes. And in one minute he could say so much, if but one minute were granted him! "But it won't be," he said sullenly, as he lay down till the dawn should come, "it isn't likely." And he ground his teeth together at the remembrance of the many minutes spent in wrangling with Mr. Hayes, while Barbara waited alone.
END OF VOL. I.