Barbara's whole soul was possessed with the desire of putting off the meeting with Berwick. How could she greet him before his sister? how could she behave as if last night—as if his soul-stirring, ardent letter, had not been? Berwick had written, among a hundred other contradictory things, "Everything shall go on as before. I will school myself to be content with the least you can give me." But even she knew that that was impossible, and she blessed the chance which had now come to her of escaping for a few hours the necessity of playing a part before Lord Bosworth and Arabella.
So absorbed was Barbara in her thoughts that she scarcely noticed Mr. Daman, when she crossed him on the broad staircase on her way to her room to get ready for her expedition. The old man, however, had seen the light from a large window beat straight on her absorbed face. For the first time Barbara reminded him of her father, of Richard Rebell, and the reminiscence was not pleasing. Pretty women, he said to himself rather crossly, should study their looks; they owed it to those about them. They ought not to get up too early in the morning and go racing upstairs! Why, it was now only half-past nine, and Mrs. Rebell had evidently already breakfasted. He himself was up at this unwonted hour because it was Sunday, and on Sunday everything should be done to spare the servants in a country house. Septimus Daman lived up to his own moral code much more completely than many of those who regarded him as a selfish old worldling could pretend to do. Still, he did not like to be baulked of innocent pleasures, and not least among them was that of having his tea poured out for him on Sunday morning by a pretty woman.
"Then you've breakfasted too?" Failing Barbara, Mr. Daman would have liked the company of Daniel O'Flaherty. "Oh, I forgot! of course you're going to your church"—a note of commiseration crept into the thin voice; the old Queen's Messenger belonged to a generation when an Irishman's religion was still the greatest of his disabilities.
"Yes, and I'm taking Mrs. Rebell with me." Septimus Daman's vested interest in Barbara amused the barrister.
"Are you indeed?" Old Septimus always went to church on Sunday, but he liked to have the duty sweetened by the presence of youth and beauty in the pew. "You never saw her mother, did you?"
"No. The Rebell Case took place some years before I came to London." It was not the first time Mr. Daman had asked the question, but O'Flaherty answered very patiently, and even added—also not for the first time—"She must have been an exceptionally beautiful and charming woman."
"Perfection, absolute perfection! Her daughter isn't a patch on her as to looks. I remember now the first time I saw Mrs. Richard Rebell I thought her the loveliest creature I'd ever set eyes upon. Her name was Adela Oglander, and people expected her to do uncommonly well for herself. Awful to think what she did do, eh? But Richard Rebell was a very taking fellow in those days. When I was a young man women were content to look—well, as Mrs. Richard Rebell looked! One doesn't see such pretty women now," Mr. Daman sighed, "I suppose our Mrs. Barbara lost her complexion in the West Indies. Those climates, so I've always understood, are damnation to the skin. Not that hers has roughened—eh, what? And she can still blush—a great thing that, almost a lost art!" he chuckled. "From what Bosworth tells me she had an awful time with the brute she married."
"Was he in the Army?"
O'Flaherty was vaguely interested. He and Mrs. Rebell had had a good deal of desultory talk, but she never alluded to her married life. Those years—he roughly guessed them to be from twenty to seven-and-twenty—seemed dropped out of her memory.