Since everything was lost, he might as well hear her talk.
"It was my fault," Barbara repeated, still doubtfully. "I told you to put them on the hall table—it was the day we had those people to dinner."
Reynold nodded.
"I had my apron on, I was busy. I went out to speak to the gardener, and I thought I would give them to the boy, so I put them in my apron pocket, yours and one of mine, and I never thought of them again."
He had balanced his chair very dexterously, and was still looking at her.
"And they have been in that little apron pocket of yours ever since! Dear me, Miss Strange, I hope yours wasn't an important letter. I'm sorry for your correspondent."
"No, mine didn't matter. Mr. Harding, tell me about yours—tell me the truth! All the time I have been waiting here—and I thought you never would come!—I have felt more and more sure that yours did matter. I can't tell why, but I am certain. Let me know the worst, please. Tell me what I have done!"
"I don't know why you are so determined that you must have done something dreadful. I assure you I'm not in the habit of writing such terribly important letters as you seem to suppose."
Reynold, as he spoke, had been thinking how strange it was that people should excite themselves about their plans for the future. What child's play and chance it all was! You dreamed, and schemed, and worked it all out, you made allowance for everything except what was really going to happen, and suddenly it was all over, and there was nothing more to be said or done. Here, for instance, was Mitchelhurst Place blown away like a bubble! Possibly, somewhere, there might be found something in the shape of a house, a certain quantity of stone and timber, set on the face of the earth and called by that name, but had Reynold been opposite the gate at that moment he would have looked at it with indifference. His Mitchelhurst Place, the one he had thought about so much, the one he meant to give the best years of his life to win, was, it now appeared, a house of cards. Barbara and he had been mightily interested in setting it up, and really it had been a very lofty and presentable edifice, till Barbara forgot to put a letter in the post, and so it all tumbled down in a minute. It was a pity, certainly.
"Tell me the truth," said the girl's voice again, with its soft accent of entreaty.