"Mrs. Boringdon," he said slowly, "is quite unlike her daughter. I should think there was very little confidence between them. If you will allow me to be rather impertinent, to take advantage of our relationship—you know my great-grandfather very wisely married your great-grandmother's sister—I should like to give you a piece of advice——"
Barbara looked at him anxiously—the youthfulness which had so disarmed him again became manifest in her face.
"My advice is that you write a note to the Johnstones, and then confide it to my care to send off with the fifty pounds you are returning to them. I will see that they receive it safely." Some instinct—the outcome, perhaps, of many money dealings with pretty women—made him add, with a touch of reserve, "But perhaps Mrs. Johnstone did not know of this loan?"
"Oh! yes, of course she did! Indeed it was she who suggested it. But for that I could not have come home." Barbara was blushing, and Berwick saw tears shining in her eyes. He felt oddly moved. He had often heard of, but he had never seen, the shedding of tears of gratitude.
"Yes," he said hastily, "I felt sure that was the case. But I do not think Mrs. Boringdon need be informed of the fact."
Mrs. Rebell had risen. A sudden fear that she might be going upstairs, that he would not see her again that night, came over Berwick.
"Do go into the drawing-room and write that note to the Johnstones, and I will join you there in a few moments. I am going over to my own quarters to fetch something which will, I think, interest you."
Berwick held open the door, waited till the echo of her footsteps had gone, then quickly lighted a pipe, and walking across the dining-room pushed open one of the sections of the high oriel window. Then he made his way round, almost stealthily, to the stretch of lawn on which opened the French windows of the two drawing-rooms. The curtains were not drawn: McGregor, and his satellite, the village lad who was being transformed into a footman, had certainly grown careless,—and yet it would have been a pity to shut out the moon, and it was not at all cold.
Pacing up and down, Berwick, every few moments, saw, set as in a frame, the whole interior of the Blue drawing-room, forming a background to Barbara Rebell. Indeed, she was quite near the window, sitting—an hour ago the fact would have shocked him—at Madame Sampiero's own writing-table, at that exquisite Louis XV. escritoire which had been discovered by Lord Bosworth in a Provençal château, and given by him, now many a long year ago, to the mistress of Chancton Priory.
Barbara had lighted the two green candles which her unseen watcher could remember as having been there so long that their colour had almost faded. She was bending over the notepaper, her slight supple figure thrown forward in a curiously graceful attitude. Again and again Berwick, walking and smoking outside, stopped and looked critically at the little scene. It is seldom that a man can so look consideringly at a woman, save perhaps at a place of public amusement, or in a church.