"Very well," he said, "I will take you across to her," and slowly they skirted the walls of the great room, now filled with movement, music, and colour.
Up to the last moment, Berwick had seriously thought of escaping the ordeal of this evening. The mere presence of Louise Marshall in his neighbourhood induced in him a sense of repulsion and of self-reproach with which he hardly knew how to cope in his present state of body and mind. And now had come the last day. Escape was in sight; not with his good will would he ever again find himself under the same roof with her—indeed, in any case he was actually going back to Chillingworth that very night. Wisdom had counselled him to avoid the ball, but the knowledge that Mrs. Rebell would be there had made him throw wisdom to the winds. Why spend hours in solitude at Chillingworth while he might be looking at Barbara—talking to Barbara—listening to Barbara?
But when it came to the point Berwick found that he had over-estimated the robustness of his own conscience. From the moment he had seen Mrs. Rebell coming up the broad staircase of Halnakeham Castle, he had realised his folly in not following the first and wisest of his instincts. Although the two women were entirely different in colouring, in general expression, indeed in everything except in age, there seemed to-night, at least to his unhappy, memory-haunted eyes, something about Barbara which recalled Mrs. Marshall, while in Mrs. Marshall there seemed, now and again, something of Barbara. So strong was this impression that at last the resemblance became to Berwick an acute obsession—in each woman he saw the other, and as the evening went on, he avoided as far as possible the company of both.
Now it had become his hateful business to serve as a link between them.
For a moment Mrs. Marshall looked at Barbara, then smilingly shook her head. "A string band would have been so much nicer, don't you think so, but the Duke believes in encouraging local talent. I wonder if you would mind coming out here for a moment—it is so much quieter in there—and I want to ask you to do me such a favour!"
Even as she spoke, she led the way from the ball-room into one of the book-lined embrasures of the long, now almost deserted, gallery, and Barbara, wondering, followed her.
Louise Marshall put on her prettiest manner. "I do hope you won't think me rude," she said, "but I am so very anxious to know if your beautiful gown came from Adolphe Peters? I do not know if you have noticed it, but of course I saw it at once,—there's a certain family likeness between my frock and yours! They say, you know, that Peters can only think out one really good original design every season—but then, when he has thought it out, how good it is!"
Mrs. Marshall spoke with a kind of sacred enthusiasm. To her, dress had always been, everything considered, the greatest and most absorbing interest of life.