"Never fear it! But the one we want to see won't be here till to-morrow afternoon—the meeting was only last night." He spoke in a very gentle voice, and then walked quickly to the door.
"Sit down just there, behind the leaf of the screen, and then I can see you. I'm afraid I gave you a great fright the other night? How good you were to me! Doctor McKirdy tells me that it might have been much worse, and that I shall be all right in a few weeks——"
Suddenly Barbara lifted her head a little,—"Miss Kemp! Lucy! What is the matter?"
"Nothing—nothing at all! Doctor McKirdy made a remark that annoyed me. It is stupid of me to mind." Poor Lucy tried to smile, but her lips quivered; she repeated, "It really was nothing, but you know how odd he is, and—and rude, sometimes?"
The sound of a carriage coming quickly up through the trees, and then being driven more carefully round the broad sweep of lawn, and so to the space before the porch, put an end to a moment of rather painful silence. Then the bell pealed loudly through the house—a vigorous peal. "Someone coming to inquire how you are," suggested Lucy diffidently, but Barbara made no answer, she was listening intently. Would McGregor never answer that insistent summons? At last they heard the front door being opened, and then quickly shut again. Now the carriage was driving away, quite slowly, in very different fashion from that of its arrival.
Barbara closed her eyes, absurdly disappointed. What reason had she to suppose that Berwick would hasten back as soon as he heard of the great danger she had been in? And even if something in her heart assured her that in this matter her instinct was not at fault, who would have conveyed the news to him? Not Oliver Boringdon, not Doctor McKirdy? Poor Barbara was very ignorant of the geography of her own country, but she knew that Scotland was a long way off, and the most important of the meetings he had gone there to attend had taken place only the night before.
But hark! there came a sound of quick muffled footsteps down the short corridor. A knock at the door, and Berwick was in the room—Berwick, haggard, sunken-eyed, bearing on his face, now ravaged with contending feelings, a look of utter physical fatigue. For a moment he stood hesitating. McGregor had told him that Miss Kemp was with Mrs. Rebell, but, as he looked round with a quick searching look, the room seemed to him to hold only Barbara—he saw nothing but Barbara's little head lying propped up on a large pillow, her eyes, her lips smiling at him with an odd look of deprecating tenderness, as if his being there was the most natural thing in the world, and yet as if she understood the dreadful night and day he had gone through, and felt grieved to think he was so tired.
Very slowly, still held by her eyes, he came forward, and as he sank on his knees, and laid his cheek on the hand stretched out on the coverlet, he saw with shuddering pain by what her other hand and arm were concealed, and he broke into hard, difficult sobs.
Lucy got up, and almost ran to the door,—she felt a passion of sympathy and pity for them both. Then she waited in the corridor, wondering what she ought to do—what Barbara would wish her to do. But that point, as generally happens in this world, was settled for her. Doctor McKirdy suddenly loomed in front of her, and even before she saw him, as the staircase creaked under his heavy footsteps, Lucy heard him muttering something to himself.
"Then he's in there, eh? And they've sent you out here?"