"Then you do think it really was Lord Bosworth?" she asked rather eagerly.
"Indeed I do not!" he turned on her fiercely, "I just think it was nobody but your fancy!"
Barbara felt foolishly vexed.
"But, Doctor McKirdy, some man undoubtedly came in, and walked across the hall. We both heard him, quite distinctly."
"And of whom were ye thinking,—ay, and may-be talking,—when ye both heard this mysterious person?"
It was a random shot, but Barbara reddened and remained silent.
Doctor McKirdy, however, did not pursue his advantage. "Look ye here," he said, not unkindly, "try and get that notion out of her head, even if ye can't out of yours. If I thought he had come, that it was he"—he clenched his hands, "'Twould be a dastardly thing to do after what I've told him of her state! But, Mrs. Barbara, believe me, 'twas all fancy,"—he looked at her with an odd twisted smile, "I'll tell you something I've never told. Years ago, just after Madam's bad illness, I went away, more fool I, for what they call a change. Well, wherever I went they followed me—she and little Julia, as much there before me as you are now! 'Twas vain to reason with myself. Julia, poor bairn, was dead—who should know it as well as I?—and Madam lay stretched out here. And yet—well, since then I've known that seeing is not all believing. Once I got back,—to her, to them,—I laid their wraiths."
Barbara shuddered. "Then you are not going to look any more? I quite admit that whoever came in is probably gone away by now."
"Of course I'll make a round of the place. D'ye think I'd break my word in that fashion?"
Together they made a long and fruitless search through the vast old house, and up to the last moment Barbara thought it possible they might find someone in hiding, some poor foot-sore sailor tramp, may-be, who had wandered in, little knowing of the trouble he was bringing—but the long search yielded nothing.