"Are you sure of that?"
"She told me so."
"Ah! that is a different matter," Fairley returned sharply. "What kind of a welcome did you expect? Have you done aught to win a more tender greeting?"
"I have done much to anger her by coming here," answered Crosby.
"You were not quarrelling when I entered just now. She spoke of to-morrow. Does a woman leave anything for the morrow if she has no interest in that morrow? You would make a poor lover, Master Crosby."
"To my knowledge I have not been cast for the part."
"We shall see," said Martin, "It's a poor fire that will not boil a kettle, and she's a poor woman who cannot make a man love her if she will. There's to-morrow, and after that you and I may talk a little more freely, perhaps. For to-night I only want sleep. I can fiddle from dusk to dawn and forget that I have not closed my eyes, but a night in the saddle—ah! my poor knees, Master Crosby! I was never meant for a horseman." And he laughed, the same notes in the laugh as came from the fiddle when it laughed.
He was half a madman—Barbara Lanison had said so—and Crosby was convinced that there was little information to be got out of him, either then or at any other time.
The next morning broke grey and sombre over Aylingford, yet Barbara woke to find the world brighter and more interesting than she had found it for a long time; perhaps it had never been quite so bright before. And yet there were clouds in it, wreaths of doubt which would not clear away. She must know more of this man Gilbert Crosby before she trusted him fully—and she wanted to trust him. Martin had told her many things in the past; she had meant to ask Martin whether she ought to stay at Aylingford; now she had a desire to take her fears to Gilbert Crosby. He had seemed so strong that day at Newgate; ever since then she had grown to believe more and more that he was a man to be relied upon in trouble, and last night—was she a little disappointed in him?
"I have expected so much," she said to herself. "Perhaps a man is never all that a woman expects him to be."