Barbara Rebell

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

For the first time since Mrs. Rebell's stay at Fletchings, dinner, served in a blue and white octagon room which seemed to have been designed to serve as background to Miss Berwick's fair, delicate type of beauty, passed almost silently and rather dully. Berwick and O'Flaherty, tired after their long day in the open air, scarcely spoke; Mr. Daman alone seemed entirely at ease, and he babbled away happily, trying to extract material for his recollections from Lord Bosworth's better garnished memory.

And so it was with a sense of relief that Barbara followed her hostess out of the room. During the last few days the two women had become, in a sense, intimate. Each liked the other better than either would have thought possible a week before. They had one subject in common of which neither ever tired, and yet how surprised they both would have been to learn how constantly their talk drifted to the political past, the uneventful present, the brilliant nebulous future, of James Berwick!

Arabella led the way up to the music gallery, and there, very soon, the two younger men joined them.

Miss Berwick was sitting at an inlaid spinet, playing an old-fashioned, jingling selection of Irish melodies, and O'Flaherty, taking up his stand by the fire-place, was able to look down at the player without seeming to do so.

Listening to the woman he had loved making music for him, Daniel O'Flaherty's mind went back, setting out on a sentimental excursion, dolorous as such are apt to be, into the past. No other woman's lips had touched his since their last interview, thirteen years before; and yet, standing there, his arm on the mantel-piece, his right hand concealing his large rather stern mouth, he told himself that his love for Arabella Berwick had burned itself out, and that he could now look at her quite dispassionately.

Still, love may go, and interest,—even a certain kind of sentiment,—may remain. What else had brought him to Fletchings? Above all, what else had made him stay on there, as he was now doing? O'Flaherty still felt an odd closeness of heart,—aye, even of body,—

Miss Berwick, to this woman whom others found so unapproachable. The years which had gone by, the long separation, had not made them strangers. After she had left him, as he thought so cruelly, he had made up his mind to put away all thought of her. He had believed it certain that she would marry—indeed, during that last interview she had told him that she intended to do so—and thinking of this, to a man so callous and incredible a statement, his heart had hardened, not only to her, but in a sense to all women.

Then time had gone on, and Lord Bosworth's niece had remained unmarried—wholly devoted, so said rumour, to her brother, but living with her uncle instead of with James Berwick because of her filial affection and gratitude to the older man. That O'Flaherty had known not to be true, for no special tie bound Arabella to her uncle. The arrangement was probably one of convenience on either side.

And now, during these last few days? O'Flaherty acknowledged that Miss Berwick's manner to him had been perfect—courteous and kind, nay, even deferential, and then sometimes a look, a word, would subtly acknowledge his claim on her special attention, while putting forward none of her own. How could he help being flattered? From where he now sat, he could see, without seeming to observe too closely, the delicate, cameo-like profile, the masses of flaxen hair, less bright in tint than when he had first admired what was still Arabella's greatest beauty.

The barrister was under no illusion as to why he had received this invitation to Lord Bosworth's country house. His present host, and of course his hostess, wished him not merely to be on James Berwick's side in the coming political struggle, for that he was already, but to ally himself in a special sense with this future Cabinet-Minister, and to join the inner circle of his friends and supporters. Neither of them yet understood that in politics all O'Flaherty cared for supremely was his own country, in spite of the fact that he had always sat for an English constituency, and had never identified himself, in any direct sense, with the Irish party. Whatever his future relations to Miss Berwick might be, his attitude to her brother must be influenced by Berwick's attitude to Ireland and Irish affairs. Perhaps it would be more honest, so he told himself to-night, to let Arabella know this fact, for during the last few days he had avoided any political discussion with his host or his hostess.