For a while, perhaps for half the time he had been with her, standing by the mantel-piece while she sat two or three yards off, there had been a truce of God. Berwick had thought out a certain line of action, and he tried to be, as some hidden instinct told him she wished to see him, once more the tender, self-less, sexless friend. He even brought his lips to mutter something like a prayer for forgiveness, and the tears came into her eyes as with uplifted hand she checked the words. Poor Barbara! She was so divinely happy, for his mere presence satisfied her heart. She had never known him quite so gentle, quite so submissive, as to-day. So glad had she been to see him that for a moment she had felt tempted to show him how welcome he was! But he had chosen,—and she was deeply grateful to him for this—to behave as if he had only parted from her the day before. Fletchings, all that happened there, was to be as if it had not been—as if the scene in the music gallery had been blotted out from their memories.
Then came an allusion on his part to his forthcoming visit to Scotland, and to the invitation which he knew his sister had been at some pains to procure for Mrs. Rebell, and which Barbara would receive the next morning.
"I cannot accept it; it is very kind of Miss Berwick, but how could I leave my god-mother again so soon?"
"Is that the only reason?" he said, and she heard with beating heart the under-current of anger, of suppressed feeling in his voice. "If so, I am sure I can make it all right. It would only be ten days, and Madame Sampiero would like you to meet the people who will be there. But perhaps"—he came nearer and stood glowering down at her—"perhaps that is not your only reason!"
And Barbara, looking up at him with beseeching eyes, shook her head.
"Do you mean"—Berwick spoke so quietly that his tone deceived her, and made her think him in amicable agreement with herself—"Do you mean that you do not wish to find yourself again under the same roof with me? Did what happened at Fletchings make that difference?"
She hesitated most painfully. "I have been very unhappy," she whispered at last, "I know we have both regretted——"
"By God, I have regretted nothing—excepting your coldness!" He grasped her hands not over-gently, and the look came into his eyes which had come there in the music room at Fletchings. "Do you wish us to go back to coldly-measured friendship?" Then he bent down and gathered her into his arms, even now not daring to kiss her. "Tell me," he said with sudden gentleness, "am I—am I—disagreeable to you, my dearest? I shall not be angry if you say yes." And Barbara, lying trembling, and as he thought inertly, unresponsively, in his arms, found the courage to answer, "I do care—but not as you wish me to do. Why cannot we go back to where we were?"
On hearing the whispered words he quickly released her, and, turning, made his way to the door. Barbara, for an agonised moment, nearly called out to him to come back and learn from her arms—her lips—how untrue were the words which were driving him away.
But in a moment, or so it seemed to her, he had thrust her from him and had gone, hastening down the great hall, and out through the porch into the air.