Reynold drew a long breath, and stood as if he were turned to stone. Adrian was only mortal, he lifted his hat, and smiled his greeting, with a look in his grey-blue eyes which said as plainly as possible, "Didn't you think I was at Sandmoor?" and then walked on towards the Ashfords' house, where he had been to the tennis party two years before. He would be very welcome there. And if he should chance to meet Barbara by the way, he knew very well what he was going to say to her. But a moment later he felt a touch of pity for the luckless fellow who had not outwitted him after all. "Poor devil!" he said, as he had said the day before.
The epithet, which, like many another, is flung about inappropriately enough, hit the mark for once. Reynold stood pale and dumb, choked with bitter hate, but helpless and hopeless enough for pity. He would do no more with hate than he had done with love. He knew it, and presently he turned and walked drearily away. He did not want to see Barbara when she had met Adrian Scarlett. He had meant to see her first, to end his unlucky little love-story with a few gentle words, to hold her hand for a moment, and then to step aside and leave her free to go her way. What harm would there have been? But this man, who was to have everything, had baulked him even in this. She would not care for his pardon now, and perhaps it would hardly have been worth taking. If one is compelled to own one's forgiveness superfluous it is difficult to keep it sweet.
So he did not see Barbara when, a little later, she came up Nutfield Lane by Scarlett's side. They stopped by the gate, and leant on it. Barbara had no flowers in her hands, but it seemed to her that all the country-side was blossoming.
She looked a little older than when Adrian had bidden her his mute farewell at Mitchelhurst. The expression of her face was at once quickened and deepened, her horizon was enlarged, though the gaze which questioned it was as innocent as ever. But her dark eyes kept a memory of the proud patience with which she had waited through the winter. There had been times when her faith in the Clergy List had been shaken, and she had doubted whether Adrian would ever consult its pages, and find out where her father lived. She did not blame him; he was free as air; yet those had been moments of almost unbearable loneliness. She never spoke of him to anybody; to have been joked and pitied by Louisa and Hetty would have been hateful to her. She thought of him continually, and dreamed of him sometimes. But there was only a limited satisfaction in dreaming of Adrian Scarlett; he was apt to be placed in absurdly topsy-turvy circumstances, and to behave unaccountably. Barbara felt, regretfully, that a girl who was parted from such a lover should have dreamed in a loftier manner. She was ashamed of herself, although she knew she could not help it. Now, however, there was no need to trouble herself about dreams or clergy lists; Adrian was leaning on the gate by her side.
"What you must have thought of me!" he was saying. "Never to take the least notice of your uncle's death! I can't think how I missed hearing of it."
"It was in the Times and some of the other papers," said Barbara.
The melancholy little announcement had seemed to her a sort of appeal to her absent lover.
"I never saw it. I was—busy just then," he explained with a little hesitation. "I suppose I didn't look at the papers. I have been fancying you at Mitchelhurst all the time, and promising myself that I would go back there, and find you where I found you first."
Barbara did not speak; she leaned back and looked up at him with a smile. Adrian's answering gaze held hers as if it enfolded it.
"I might have written," he said, "or inquired—I might have done something, at any rate! I can't think how it was I didn't! But I'd got it into my head that I wanted to get those poems of mine out—wanted to go back to you with my volume in my hand, and show you the dedication. I was waiting for that—I never thought——"