MITCHELHURST PLACE

A Novel

BY

MARGARET VELEY

AUTHOR OF "FOR PERCIVAL"

"Que voulez-vous? Hélas! notre mère Nature,
Comme toute autre mère, a ses enfants gâtés,
Et pour les malvenus elle est avare et dure!"

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I.

London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1884

The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.

Bungay:

CLAY AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.

TO
BARBARA'S BEST FRIEND

ELFRIDA IONIDES

HER STORY IS MOST AFFECTIONATELY
AND GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED.

[CONTENTS OF VOL. I.]

MITCHELHURST PLACE

[CHAPTER I.]
TREASURES DROPPED AND PICKED UP.

"Dans l'air pâle, émanant ses tranquilles lumières
Rayonnait l'astre d'or de l'arrière-saison."

There was nothing remarkable in the scene. It was just a bit of country lane, cut deeply into the side of a hill, and seamed with little pebbly courses, made by the streams of rain which had poured across it on their downward way. The hill-side faced the west, and, standing on this ledge as on a balcony, one might look down into a valley where cattle were feeding in the pastures, and where a full and softly-flowing river turned the wheel of a distant mill, and slipped quietly under the arched bridge of the lower road. Sometimes in summer the water lay gleaming, like a curved blade, in the midst of the warm green meadows, but on this late October day it was misty and wan, and light vapours veiled the pale globe of the declining sun. Looking upward from the valley, a broad slope of ploughed land rose above the road, and the prospect ended in a hedge, a gate, through whose bars one saw the sky, and a thin line of dusky, red-trunked firs. But from the road itself there was nothing to be seen in this direction except a steep bank. This bank was crowned with hawthorn bushes, and here and there a stubborn stunted oak, which held its dry brown leaves persistently, as some oaks do. With every passing breath of wind there was a crisp rustling overhead.

This bit of road lay deserted in the faint yellow gleams. But for a wisp of straw, caught on an overhanging twig, and some cart-tracks, which marked the passage of a load, one might have fancied that the pale sun had risen, and now was about to set, without having seen a single wayfarer upon it. But there were four coming towards it, and, slowly as two of them might travel, they would yet reach it while the sunlight lasted. The little stage was to have its actors that afternoon.

First there appeared a man's figure on the crest of the hill. He swung himself over the gate, and came with eager strides down the field, till he reached the hedge which divided it from the road. There he stopped, consulted his watch, and sheltering himself behind one of the little oaks, he rested one knee on a mossy stump, and thus, half-standing, half-kneeling, he waited. The attitude was picturesque, and so was the man. He had bright grey-blue eyes, hair and moustache brown, with a touch of reddish gold, a quick, animated face, and a smiling mouth. It was easy to see that he was sanguine and fearless, and on admirable terms with himself and the world in general. He was young, and he was pleasant to look at, and, though he could hardly have dressed with a view to occupying that precise position, his brown velvet coat was undeniably in the happiest harmony with the tree against which he leaned, and the withered foliage above his head.

To wait there, with his eyes fixed on that unfrequented way, hardly seemed a promising pastime. But the young fellow was either lucky or wise. He had not been there more than five minutes by his watch, when a girl turned the corner, and came, with down-bent head, slowly sauntering along the road below him. His clasping hand on the rough oak-bark shifted slightly, to allow him to lean a little further and gain a wider range, though he was careful to keep in the shelter of his tree and the hawthorn hedge. A few steps brought the girl exactly opposite his hiding-place. There she paused.

She sauntered because her hands and eyes were occupied, and she took no heed of the way she went. She paused because her occupation became so engrossing that she forgot to take another step. She wore long, loose gloves, to guard her hands and wrists, and as she came she had pulled autumn leaves of briony and bramble, and brier sprays with their bunches of glowing hips. These she was gathering together and arranging, partly that they might be easier to carry, and partly to justify her pleasure in their beauty by setting it off to the best advantage. As she completed her task, a tuft of yellow leaves on the bank beside her caught her eye. She stretched her hand to gather it, and the man above looked straight down into her unconscious upturned face.

She was not more than eighteen or nineteen, and by a touch of innocent shyness in her glances and movements she might have been judged to be still younger. She was slight and dark, with a soft loose cloud of dusky hair, and a face, not flower-like in its charm, but with a healthful beauty more akin to her own autumn berries—ripe, clear-skinned, and sweet. As she looked up, with red lips parted, it was hardly wonderful that the lips of the man in ambush, breathlessly silent though he was, made answer with a smile. She plucked the yellow leaves and turned away, and he suffered his breath to escape softly in a sigh. Yet he was smiling still at the pretty picture of that innocent face held up to him.

It was all over in a minute. She had come and gone, and he stood up, still cautiously, lest she should return, and looked at the broad brown slope down which he had come so eagerly. Every step of that lightly-trodden way must be retraced, and time was short. But even as he faced it he turned for one last glance at the spot where she had stood. And there, like coloured jewels on the dull earth, lay a bunch of hips, orange and glowing scarlet, which she had unawares let fall. In a moment he was down on the road, had caught up his prize, and almost as quickly had pulled himself up again, and was standing behind the sheltering tree while he fastened it in his coat. And when he had secured it, it seemed, after all, as if he had needed just that touch of soft bright colour, and would not have been completely himself without it.

"Barbara's gift," he said to himself, looking down at it. "I'll tell her of it one of these days, when the poor things are dead and dry! No, that they never shall be!" He quickened his pace. "They shall live, at any rate, for me. It would not be amiss for a sonnet. Love's Gleaning—yes, or Love's Alms," and before the young fellow's eyes rose the dainty vision of a creamy, faintly-ribbed page, with strong yet delicately-cut Roman type and slim italics. Though not a line of it was written, he could vaguely see that sonnet in which his rosy spoil should be enshrined. He could even see Barbara reading it, on some future day, while he added the commentary, which was not for the world in general, but for Barbara. It became clearer to him as he hurried on, striking across the fields to reach his destination more directly. Snatches of musical words floated on the evening air, and he quickened his pace unconsciously as if in actual pursuit. To the east the sky grew cold and blue, and the moon, pearl white, but as yet not luminous, swam above him as he walked.

So the poet went in quest of rhymes, and Barbara, strolling onward, looked for leaves and berries. She had not gone far when she spied some more, better, of course, than any she had already gathered. This time they were on the lower bank which sloped steeply downward to a muddy ditch. Barbara looked at them longingly, decided that they were attainable, and put her nosegay down on the damp grass that she might have both hands free for her enterprise.

She was certain she could get them. She leaned forward, her finger-tips almost brushed them, when a man's footsteps, close beside her, startled her into consciousness of an undignified position, and she sprang back to firmer ground. But a thin chain she wore had caught on a thorny spray. It snapped, and a little gold cross dropped from it, and lay, rather more than half-way down, among the briers and withered leaves. She snatched at the dangling chain, and stood, flushed and disconcerted, trying to appear absorbed in the landscape, and unconscious of the passer-by who had done the mischief. If only he would pass by as quickly as possible, and leave her to regain her treasure and gather her berries!

But the steps hesitated, halted, and there was a pause—an immense pause—during which Barbara kept her eyes fixed on a particular spot in the meadow below. It appeared to her that the eyes of the unknown man were fixed on the back of her head, and the sensation was intolerable. After a moment, however, he spoke, and broke the spell. It was a gentleman's voice, she perceived, but a little forced and hard, as if the words cost him something of an effort.

"I—I beg your pardon, but can I be of any service? I think you dropped something—ah! a little cross." He came to her side. "Will you allow me to get it for you?"

Barbara went through the form of glancing at him, but she did not meet his eyes. "Thank you," she said, "but I needn't trouble you, really." And she returned to her pensive contemplation of that spot where the meadow grass grew somewhat more rankly tufted.

He paused again before speaking. It seemed to Barbara that this young man did nothing but pause. "I don't think you can get it," he said, looking at the brambles. "I really don't think you can."

If Barbara had frankly uttered her inmost sentiments she would have said, "Great idiot—no—not if you don't go away!" But, as it was, she coloured yet more in her shyness, and stooped to pick up her nosegay from the ground. He had been within an inch of treading on it.

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" he exclaimed, starting back. "How clumsy of me!"

Something in his tone disarmed her. She feared that she had been ungracious, and moreover she was a little doubtful whether she would not find it difficult to regain her trinket without his help. "You haven't done any harm," she said. Then, glancing downward, "Well, if you will be so kind."

The new-comer surveyed the situation so intently that Barbara took the opportunity of surveying him.

She was familiar, in novels, with heroes and heroines who were not precisely beautiful, yet possessed a nameless and all-conquering charm. Perhaps for that very reason she was slow to recognize good looks where this charm was absent. The tall young fellow who stood a few steps away, gazing with knitted brows at the little wilderness of briers, was really very handsome, but he was not certain of the fact. Beauty should not be self-conscious, but it should not despondently question its own existence. This man seemed to be accustomed to a chilly, ungenial atmosphere, to be numbed and repressed, to lack fire. Barbara fancied that if he touched her his hand would be cold.

In point of actual features he was decidedly the superior of the young fellow who was climbing the hill-side, but the pleasant colour and grace were altogether wanting. Yet he was not exactly awkward. Neither was he ill-dressed, though his clothes did not seem to express his individuality, except perhaps by the fact that they were black and grey. Any attempt at description falls naturally into cold negatives, and the scarlet autumn berries which were just a jewel-like brightness in the first picture would have been a strange and vivid contrast in the second.

His momentary hesitation on the brink of his venture was not in reality indecision, but the watchful distrust produced by a conviction that circumstances were hostile. He wished to take them all into account. Having briefly considered the position of the cross, and the steepness of the bank, he stepped boldly down. In less than half a second the treacherous earth had betrayed him; his foot slipped, he fell on his back, and slid down the short incline to the muddy ditch at the bottom, losing his hat by the way.

Barbara, above him, uttered a silvery little "Oh!" of dismay and surprise. She was not accustomed to a man who failed in what he undertook.

The victim of the little accident was grimly silent. With a scrambling effort he recovered his footing and lost it again. A second attempt was more successful; he secured the cross, clambered up, and restored it to its owner, turning away from her thanks to pick up his hat, which luckily lay within easy reach. Barbara did not know which way to look. She was painfully, burningly conscious of his evil plight. His boots were coated with mire, his face was darkly flushed and seamed with a couple of brier scratches, a bit of dead leaf was sticking in his hair, and "Oh," thought Barbara, "he cannot possibly know how muddy his back is!"

She stood, turning the little cross in her fingers. "Thank you very much," she said nervously. "I should never have got it for myself."

"Are you quite sure?" he asked, with bitter distinctness. "I think you would have managed it much better."

"I'm sure I would rather not try." She dared not raise her eyes to his face, but she saw that he wore no glove, and that the thorns had torn his hand. He was winding his handkerchief round it, and the blood started through the white folds. "Oh, you have hurt yourself!" she exclaimed. He answered only with an impatient gesture of negation.

"How am I to thank you?" she asked despairingly.

"Don't you think the less said the better, at any rate for me?" he replied, picking a piece of bramble from his sleeve, and glancing aside, as if to permit her to go her way with no more words.

But Barbara held her ground. "I should have been sorry to lose that cross. I—I prize it very much."

"Then I am sorry to have given you an absurd association with it."

"Please don't talk like that. I shall remember your kindness," said the girl hurriedly. She felt as if she must add something more. "I always fancy my cross is a kind of—what do they call those things that bring good luck?"

"Amulet? Talisman?"

"Yes, a talisman," she repeated, with a little nod. "It belonged to my godmother. I was named after her. She died before I was a year old, but I have heard my mother say she was the most beautiful woman she ever saw. Oh, I should hate to lose it!"

"Would your luck go with it?" He smiled as he asked the question, and the smile was like a momentary illumination, revealing the habitual melancholy of his mouth.

"Perhaps," said Barbara.

"Well, you would not have lost it this afternoon, as it was quite conspicuously visible," he rejoined.

By this time he had brushed his hat, and, passing his hand over his short waves of dark hair, had found and removed the bit of leaf which had distressed Barbara. She advanced a step, perhaps emboldened a little by that passing smile. "Oh, I beg your pardon," she said, "but when you slipped you got some earth on your coat." (She fancied that "earth" sounded a little more dignified than "mud" or "dirt," and that he might not mind it quite so much.) "Please let me brush it off for you." She looked up at him with a pleading glance and produced a filmy little feminine handkerchief.

He eyed her, drawing back. "No!" he ejaculated; and then, more mildly, "No, thank you. I can manage. No, thank you."

"I wish——" Barbara began, but she said no more, for the expression of his face changed so suddenly that she looked over her shoulder to discover the cause.

A gentleman stood a few steps away, gazing at them in unconcealed surprise. A small, neat, black-clothed gentleman, with bright grey eyes and white hair and whiskers, who wore a very tall hat and carried a smart little cane.

"Uncle!" the girl exclaimed, and her uplifted hand dropped loosely by her side.

[CHAPTER II.]
AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION.

The old gentleman's face would have been a mere note of interrogation, but for a hint of chilly displeasure in its questioning. The young people answered with blushes. The word was the same for both, but the fact was curiously different. The colour that sprang to Barbara's cheek was light and swift as flame, while the man at her side reddened slowly, as if with the rising of a dark and sullen tide, till the lines across his face were angrily swollen. The bandage, loosely wound round his hand, showed the wet stains, and the new-comer's bright gaze, travelling downwards, rested on it for a moment, and then passed on to the muddy boots and trousers.

"Uncle," said Barbara, "I dropped my gold cross, and this gentleman was so kind as to get it back for me."

"It was nothing—I was very glad to be of any service, but it isn't worth mentioning," the stranger protested, again with a rough edge of effort in his tone.

"On the contrary," said the old gentleman, "I fear my niece has given you a great deal of trouble. I am sure we are both of us exceedingly obliged to you for your kindness." He emphasised his thanks with a neat little bow. To the young man's angry fancy it seemed that his glance swept the landscape, as if he sought some perilous precipice, which might account for the display of mud and wounds.

"Yes," said Barbara, quickly, "the bank is so slippery, and there are such horrid brambles—look, uncle! I came to meet you, and I was gathering some leaves, and my chain caught and snapped."

"Ah! that bank! Yes, a very disagreeable place," he assented, looking up at the stranger. "I am really very sorry that you should have received such——" he hesitated for a word, and then finished, "such injuries."

"The bank is nothing. I was clumsy," was the reply.

"I think, Barbara, we must be going home," her uncle suggested. The young man stood aside to let them pass, with a certain awkwardness and irresolution, for their road was the same as his own.

"I beg your pardon," he said, abruptly, "but perhaps, if you are going that way, you can tell me how far it is to Mitchelhurst."

They both looked surprised. "About a mile and a half. Were you going to Mitchelhurst?"

"Yes, but if you know it——"

"We live there," said Barbara.

"Perhaps you could tell me what I want to know. I would just as soon not go on this afternoon. Is there a decent inn, or, better still, could one be tolerably sure of getting lodgings in the place, without securing them beforehand?"

"You want lodgings there?"

"Only for a few days. I came by train a couple of hours ago"—he named a neighbouring town—"and they told me at the hotel that it was uncertain whether I should find accommodation at Mitchelhurst; so I left my luggage there, and walked over to make inquiries."

"I do not think that I can recommend the inn," said the other, doubtfully. "I fear you would find it beery, and smoky, and noisy—the village alehouse, you understand. Sanded floors, and rustics with long clay pipes—that's the kind of thing at the 'Rothwell Arms.'"

"Ah! the 'Rothwell Arms'!"

"And as for lodgings," the old man continued, with something alert and watchful in his manner, "the fact is people don't care to lodge in Mitchelhurst. They live there, a few of them—myself for instance—but there is nothing in the place to attract ordinary visitors."

He paused, but the only comment was—

"Indeed?"

"Nothing whatever," he affirmed. "A little, out-of-the-way, uninteresting village—but you are anxious to stay here?"

The stranger was re-arranging the loosened handkerchief with slender, unskilful fingers.

"For a few days—yes," he repeated, half absently, as he tried to tuck away a hanging end.

"Uncle," said Barbara, with timid eagerness, "doesn't Mrs. Simmonds let lodgings? When that man came surveying, or something, last summer, didn't he have rooms in her house? I'm very nearly sure he did."

Her uncle intercepted, as it were, the stranger's glance of inquiry.

"Perhaps. But I don't think Mrs. Simmonds will do on this occasion."

"Why not?" the other demanded. "I don't suppose I'm more particular than the man who came surveying. If the place is decently clean, why not?"

"Because your name is Harding. I don't know what his might happen to be."

The young man drew himself up, almost as if he repelled an accusation. Then he seemed to recollect himself.

"Yes," he said, "it is. How did you know that?"

The little Mitchelhurst gentleman found such pleasure in his own acuteness that it gave a momentary air of cordiality to his manner.

"My dear sir," he replied, looking critically at Harding's scratched face, "I knew the Rothwells well. I recognise the Rothwell features."

"You must be a keen observer," said the other curtly.

"Voice too," the little man continued. "Especially when you repeated the name of the inn—the Rothwell Arms."

Harding laughed.

"Upon my word! The Rothwells have left me more of the family property than I was aware of."

"Then there was your destination. Who but a Rothwell would ever want to stay at Mitchelhurst?"

"I see. I appear to have betrayed myself in a variety of ways." The discovery of his name seemed to have given him a little more ease of manner of a defiant and half-mocking kind. "What, is there something more?" he inquired, as his new acquaintance recommenced, "And then——"

"Yes, enough to make me very sure. You wear a ring on your little finger which your mother gave you. She used to wear it thirty years ago."

"True!" said Harding, in a tone of surprise. "You knew my mother then?"

"As I say—thirty years ago. She is still living, is she not? And in good health, I trust?"

"Yes." The young man looked at his ring. "You have a good memory," he said, with an inflection which seemed to convey that he would have ended the sentence with a name, had he known one.

The little gentleman took the hint.

"My name is Herbert Hayes." He spoke with careful precision, it was impossible to mistake the words, yet there was something tentative and questioning in their utterance. The young man's face betrayed a puzzled half-recognition.

"I've heard my mother speak of you," he said.

"But you don't remember what she said?"

"Not much, I'm afraid. It is very stupid of me. But that I have heard her speak of you I'm certain. I know your name well."

"There was nothing much to say. We were very good friends thirty years ago. Mrs. Harding might naturally mention my name if she were speaking of Mitchelhurst. Does she often talk of old days?"

"Not often. I shall tell her I met you."

Barbara stood by, wondering and interested, glancing to and fro as they spoke. At this moment she caught her uncle's eye.

"By the way," he said, "I have not introduced you to my niece—my great-niece, to be strictly accurate—Miss Barbara Strange."

Harding bowed ceremoniously, and yet with a touch of self-contemptuous amusement. He bowed, but he remembered that she had seen him slide down a muddy bank on his back by way of an earlier introduction.

"Mr. Rothwell Harding, I suppose I should say?" the old man inquired.

"No. I'm not named Rothwell. I'm Reynold Harding."

"Reynold?"

"Yes. It's an old name in my father's family. That is," he concluded, in the dead level of an expressionless tone, "as old a name as there is in my father's family, I believe."

"I suppose his grandfather was named Reynold," said Mr. Hayes to himself. Aloud he replied, "Indeed. How about Adam?"

Harding constrained himself to smile, but he did it with such an ill grace that Mr. Hayes perceived that he was a stupid prig, who could not take a joke, and gave himself airs.

"About these lodgings?" the young man persisted, returning to the point. "If Miss Strange knows of some, why won't they do for me?"

Mr. Hayes gulped down his displeasure.

"There is only one roof that can shelter you in Mitchelhurst," he said magnificently, "and that is the roof of Mitchelhurst Place."

"Of Mitchelhurst Place?" Reynold was taken by surprise. He made a little step backward, and Barbara, needlessly alarmed, cried, "Mind the ditch!" Her impulsive little scream nearly startled him into it, but he recovered himself on the brink, and they both coloured again, he angrily, she in vexation at having reminded him of his mishap. "How can I go to Mitchelhurst Place?" he demanded in his harshly hurried voice.

"As my guest," said Mr. Hayes. "I am Mr. Croft's tenant. I live there—with my niece."

The young man's eyes went from one to the other. Barbara's face was hardly less amazed than his own.

"Oh thank you!" he said at last. "It's exceedingly good of you, but I couldn't think of troubling you—I really couldn't. The lodgings Miss Strange mentioned will do very well for me, I am sure, or I could manage for a day or two at the inn."

"Indeed—" Mr. Hayes began.

"But I am not particular," said Harding with his most defiant air and in his bitterest tone, "I assure you I am not. I have never been able to afford it. I shall be all right. Pray do not give the matter another thought. I'm very much obliged to you for your kindness, but it's quite out of the question, really."

"No," said Mr. Hayes, resting his little black kid hands on the top of his stick and looking up at the tall young man, "it is out of the question that you should go anywhere else. Pray do not suggest it. You intended to go back to your hotel this evening and to come on to Mitchelhurst to-morrow? Then let us have the pleasure of seeing you to-morrow as early as you like to come."

"Indeed—indeed," protested Harding, "I could not think of intruding."

The little gentleman laughed.

"My dear sir, who is the intruder at Mitchelhurst Place? Answer me that! No," he said, growing suddenly serious, "you cannot go to the pot house—you—your mother's son—while I live in the Rothwells' old home. It is impossible—I cannot suffer it. I should be for ever ashamed and humiliated if you refused a few days' shelter under the old roof. I should indeed."

"If you put it so——"

"There is no other way to put it."

"I can say no more. I can only thank you for your kindness. I will come," said Reynold Harding, slowly. Urgent as the invitation was, and simply as it was accepted, there was yet a curious want of friendliness about it. Circumstances constrained these two men, not any touch of mutual liking. One would have said that Mr. Hayes was bound to insist and Harding to yield.

"That is settled then," said the elder man, "and we shall see you to-morrow. I am a good deal engaged myself, but Barbara is quite at home in Mitchelhurst, and can show you all the Rothwell memorials—the Rothwells are the romance of Mitchelhurst, you know. She'll be delighted to do the honours, eh, Barbara?"

The girl murmured a shy answer.

"Oh, if I trespass on your kindness I think that's enough; I needn't victimise Miss Strange," said the young man, and he laughed a little, not altogether pleasantly. "And I can't claim any of the romance. My name isn't Rothwell."

"The name isn't everything," said Mr. Hayes. "Come, Barbara, it's getting late, and I want my dinner. Till to-morrow, then," and he held out his hand to their new acquaintance.

Young Harding bowed stiffly to Barbara. "Till to-morrow afternoon."

The old man and the girl walked away, he with an elderly sprightliness of bearing which seemed to say, "See how active I still am!" she moving by his side with dreamy, unconscious grace. They came to a curve in the road, and she turned her head and looked back before she passed it. Mr. Reynold Harding had taken but a couple of steps from the spot where they had left him. He had apparently arranged his bandage to his satisfaction at last, and was pulling at the knot with his teeth and his other hand, but his face was towards them, and Barbara knew that he saw that backward glance. She quickened her steps in hot confusion, and looked straight before her for at least five minutes.

During that time it was her uncle who was the hero of her thoughts. His dramatic recognition of Harding and Harding's ring, his absolute refusal to permit the young man to go to any house in Mitchelhurst but the Place, something in the tone of his voice when he uttered his "thirty years ago," hinted a romance to Barbara. The conjecture might or might not be correct, but at any rate it was natural. Girls who do not understand love are apt to use it to explain all the other things they do not understand. She waited till her cheeks were cool, and her thoughts clear, and then she spoke.

"I didn't know you knew the Rothwells so well, uncle."

"My dear," said her uncle, "how should you?"

"I suppose you might have talked about them."

"I might," said Mr. Hayes. "Now you mention it, I might, certainly. But I haven't any especial fancy for the gossip of the last generation."

"Well, I have," said the girl. And after a moment she went on. "How long is it since they left the Place?"

Her uncle put his head on one side with a quick, birdlike movement, and apparently referred to a cloud in the western sky before he made answer.

"Nineteen years last Midsummer."

"And when did you take it?"

"A year later."

The two walked a little way in silence, and then Barbara recommenced.

"This Mr. Harding—he is like the Rothwells, then?"

"Rothwell from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. The old people, who knew the family, will find him out as he walks through the village—see if they don't. The same haughty, sulky, sneering way with him, and just the same voice. Only every Rothwell at the Place, even to the last, had an air of being a grand seigneur, which this fellow can't very well have. Upon my word, I begin to think it was the pleasantest thing about them. I don't like a pride which is conscious of being homeless and out at elbows."

Barbara undauntedly pursued her little romance.

"You are talking about the men," she said. "Is Mr. Harding like his mother?"

"Well, she was a handsome woman," Mr. Hayes replied indifferently, "but she had the same unpleasant manner."

The girl was thrown back on an utter blankness of ideas. A woman beloved may have a dozen faults, and be the dearer for them; but she cannot possibly have an unpleasant manner. Barbara could frame no theory to fit the perplexing facts.

As they turned into the one street of Mitchelhurst, Mr. Hayes spoke musingly.

"To-morrow afternoon, Barbara, let that young man have the blue room—the large room. You know which I mean?"

"Yes, uncle."

"See that everything is nice and in order. And, Barbara——"

"Yes, uncle," said Barbara again, for he paused.

"Mr. Reynold Harding will probably look down on you. I suspect he thinks that you and I are about fit to black his boots. Be civil, of course, but you needn't do it."

"I'm sure I don't want," said the girl quietly; "and at that rate I should hope he would come with them tolerably clean to-morrow."

Mr. Hayes laughed suddenly, showing his teeth.

"By Jove!" he said, "they were dirty enough this afternoon!"

"In my service," said Barbara. "Now I come to think of it, it seems to me that I ought to clean them."

"Nonsense!" her uncle exclaimed, still smiling at the remembrance. "And you saw him roll into the ditch?—Barbara, the poor fellow must hate you like poison!"

She looked down as she walked, drawing her delicate brows a little together.

"I dare say he does," she said softly, as if to herself.

Between ten and eleven that evening Mr. Reynold Harding sat by his fireside, staring at the red coals as they faded drearily into ashes. Being duly washed and brushed, he showed but slight traces of his accident. The scratches on his face were not deep, and his torn hand was mended with little strips of black plaster. Intently as he seemed to think, his thoughts were not definite. Had he been questioned concerning them he could have answered only "Mitchelhurst." Anger, tenderness, curiosity, pride, and bitter self-contempt were mixed in silent strife in the shadows of his soul. The memory of the Rothwells had drawn him on his pilgrimage—a vain, hopeless, barren memory, and yet the best he had. He had intended to wander about the village, to look from a distance at the Rothwells' house, to stand by the Rothwells' graves in the churchyard, and to laugh at his own folly as he did so. And now he was to sleep under their roof, to know the very rooms where they had lived and died, and for this he was to thank these strangers who played at hospitality in the old home. He thought of the morrow with curious alternations of distaste and eagerness.

Mr Hayes, meanwhile, with the lamplight shining on his white hair, was studying a paper in the Transactions of the County Archæological Society, "On an Inscription in Mitchelhurst Church." Mr Hayes had a theory of his own on the subject, and smiled over the vicar's view with the tranquil enjoyment of unalloyed contempt.

And Barbara, in the silence of her room, opposite a dimly-lighted mirror, sat brushing her shadowy hair, whose waves seemed to melt into the dusk about the pale reflection of her face. As she gazed at it she was thinking of some one who was gone, and of some one who was to come. Dwelling among the old memories of Mitchelhurst Place, her girlish thoughts had turned to them for lack of other food, till the Rothwells were real to her in a sense in which no other fancies ever could be real. She was so conscious that her connection with the house was accidental and temporary, that she felt as if it still belonged to its old owners, and she was only their guest. They were always near, yet, whimsically enough, in point of time they were nearest when they were most remote. Barbara's phantoms mostly belonged to the last century, and they faded and grew pale as they approached the present day, till the latest owner of the Place was merely a name. The truth was that at the end of their reign the Rothwells, impoverished and lonely, had simply lived in the house as they found it, and were unable to set the stamp of any individual tastes upon their surroundings. They were the Rothwells of the good old times who left their autographs in the books in the library, their patient needlework on quilts and bell-pulls, their mouldering rose-leaves in great china jars, their pictures still hanging on the walls, and traces of their preferences in the names of rooms and paths. There were inscriptions under the bells that had summoned servants long ago, which told of busy times and a full house. The lettering only differed from anything in the present day by being subtly and unobtrusively old-fashioned. "Mr. Gerald" and "Mr. Thomas" had given up ringing bells for many a long day, and if the one suspended above Miss Sarah's name sometimes tinkled through the stillness, it was only because Barbara wanted some hot water. Miss Sarah was one of the most distinct of the girl's phantoms. Rightly or wrongly, Barbara always believed her to be the beautiful Miss Rothwell of whom an old man in the village told her a tradition, told to him in his boyhood. It seemed that a Rothwell of some uncertain date stood for the county ("and pretty nigh ruined himself," said her informant, with a grim, yet admiring, enjoyment of the extravagant folly of the contest), and in the very heat of the election Miss Rothwell drove with four horses to the polling-place, to show herself clothed from head to foot in a startling splendour of yellow, her father's colour.

"They said she was a rare sight to see," the old man concluded meditatively.

"And did Mr. Rothwell get in?" asked Barbara.

"No, no!" he said, shaking his head. "No Rothwell ever got in for the county, though they tried times. But he pretty nigh ruined himself."

Had she cared to ask her uncle, Barbara might very possibly have ascertained the precise date of the election, and identified the darkly beautiful girl who was whirled by her four spirited horses into the roaring, decorated town. But she was not inclined to talk of her fancies to Mr. Hayes. So, assuming the heroine to be Miss Sarah, she remained in utter ignorance concerning her after life. Did she ever wear the white robes of a bride, or the blackness of widow's weeds? Barbara often wondered. But at night, in her room, which was Sarah Rothwell's, she could never picture her otherwise than superbly defiant in the meteor-like glory of that one day.

As she brushed her dusky cloud of hair that evening she called up the splendour of her favourite vision, and then her thoughts fell sadly away from it to Reynold Harding, the man who had kindred blood in his veins, but no inheritance of name or land. Those iron horse-hoofs, long ago, had thundered over the bit of road where Barbara gathered her autumn nosegay, and where young Harding—oh, poor fellow!—slipped in the mire, and scrambled awkwardly to his feet, a pitiful, sullen figure to put beside the beautiful Miss Rothwell.

Was she glad he was coming? She laid down her brush and mused, looking into the depths of her mirror. Yes, she was glad. She did not think she should like him. She felt that he was hostile, scornful, dissatisfied. But Mitchelhurst was quiet—so few people ever came to it, and if they did come they went away without a word—and at eighteen quiet is wearisome, and a spice of antagonism is refreshing. Did he hate her as her uncle had said? Time would show. She took her little cross from the dressing table, and looked at it with a new interest. No, she did not like him. "But, after all," said Barbara to herself, "he is a Rothwell, and my fairy godmother introduced us!"

Many miles away a bunch of hips, scarlet and orange, lay by a scribbled paper. They had had adventures since they were pulled from a Mitchelhurst brier that afternoon. They had been lost and found, and travelling by rail had nearly been lost again. A clumsy porter, shouldering a load, had blundered against an absorbed young man, who was just grasping a rhyme; and the red berries fell between them to the dusty platform, and were barely saved from perils of hurrying feet. Still, though a little bruised and spoilt, they glowed ruddily in the candle-light, and the paper beside them said—

"Speech was forbidden me; I could but stay,
Ambushed behind a leafless hawthorn screen,
And look upon her passing. She had been
To pluck red berries on that autumn day,
And Love, who from her side will never stray,
Stole some for pity, seeing me unseen,
And sighing, let them fall, that I might glean—
'Poor gift,' quoth he, 'that Time shall take away!'
Nay, but I mock at Time! It shall not be
That, fleet of foot, he robs me of my prize;
Her smile has kindled all the sullen skies,
Blessed the dull furrows, and the leafless tree,
And year by year the autumn, ere it dies,
Shall bring my rosy treasure back to me!"

[CHAPTER III.]
"WELCOME TO MITCHELHURST PLACE."

Mitchelhurst was, as Mr. Hayes had said, a dull little village, by no means likely to attract visitors. It was merely a group of houses, for the most part meanly built, set in a haphazard fashion on either side of a wide road. Occasionally a shed would come to the front, or two or three poplars, or a bit of garden fence. But the poplars were apt to be mercilessly lopped, with just a tuft at the extreme tip, which gave each unlucky tree a slight resemblance to a lion's tail, and the gardens, if not full of cabbages, displayed melancholy rows of stumps where cabbages had been. There was very little traffic through Mitchelhurst Street, as this thoroughfare was usually called, yet it showed certain signs of life. Fowls rambled aimlessly about it, with a dejected yet inquiring air, which seemed to say that they would long ago have given up their desultory pecking if they could have found anything else to do. A windmill, standing on a slight eminence a little way from the road, creaked as its sails revolved. Sounds of hammering came from the blacksmith's forge. Children played on the foot-path, a little knot of loungers might generally be seen in front of the "Rothwell Arms," and at most of the doorways stood the Mitchelhurst women, talking loudly while their busy fingers were plaiting straws. This miserably paid work was much in vogue in the village, where generation after generation of children learned it, and grew up into stunted, ill-fed girls, fond of coarse gossip, and of their slatternly independence.

At the western end of the village, beyond the alehouse, stood the church, with two or three yews darkening the crowded graveyard. The vicarage was close at hand, a sombre little house, with a flagged path leading to its dusky porch. Mitchelhurst was not happy in its vicars. The parish was too small to attract the heroic enthusiasts who are ready to live and die for the unhealthy and ignorant crowds of our great cities. And the house was too poor, and the neighbourhood too uninteresting, for any kindly country gentleman, who chanced to have "the Reverend" written before his name, to come and stable his horses, and set up his liberal housekeeping, and preach his Sunday sermons there. No one chose Mitchelhurst, so "those few sheep in the wilderness" were left to those who had no choice, and the vicars were almost always discontented elderly men. As a rule they died there, a vicar of Mitchelhurst being seldom remembered by the givers of good livings. The incumbent at this time was a feeble archæologist, who coughed drearily in his damp little study, and looked vaguely out at the world from a narrow and mildewed past. As he stepped from the shadowy porch, blinking with tired eyes, he would pause on the path, which looked like a row of flat unwritten tombstones, and glance doubtfully right and left. Probably he had some vague idea of going into the village, but in nine cases out of ten he turned aside to the graveyard, and sauntered musingly in the shadow of the old yews, or disappeared into the church, where there were two or three inscriptions just sufficiently defaced to be interesting. He fancied he should decipher them one day, and leave nothing for his successor to do, and he haunted them in that hope.

When he went into the street he spoke kindly to the women at the doors, with an obvious forgetfulness of names and circumstances which made him an object of contemptuous pity. They could not conceive how any one in his senses could make such foolish mistakes, and were inclined to look on the Established Church as a convenient provision for weak-minded gentlefolks. They grinned when he had gone by, and repeated his well-meant inquiries, plaiting all the time. It was only natural that the vicar should prefer his parishioners dead. They did not then indulge in coarse laughter, they never described unpleasant ailments, and they were neatly labelled with their names, or else altogether silent concerning them.

The vicar's shortcomings might have been less remarked had the tenants of Mitchelhurst Place taken their proper position in the village. But where, seventy or eighty years before, the great gates swung open for carriages and horses, and busy servants, and tradesmen, there came now down the mossy drive only an old man on foot, and a girl by his side, with eyes like dark waters, and a sweet richness of carnation in her cheeks. Mr. Hayes and his niece lived, as the later Rothwells had lived, in a corner of the old house. It was queer that a man should choose to hire a place so much too big for him, people said, but they had said it for nineteen years, and they never seemed to get any further. Herbert Hayes might be eccentric, but he was shrewd, he knew his own business, and the villagers recognised the fact. He was not popular, there was nothing to be got by begging at the Place, and he would not allow Barbara to visit any of the cottages. But it was acknowledged that he was not stingy in payment for work done. And if he lived in a corner he knew how to make himself comfortable there, which was more than the last Rothwell had been able to do.

The church and vicarage were at one end of Mitchelhurst, and the Place, which stood on slightly rising ground, was at the other. It was a white house, and in a dim light it had a sad and spectral aspect, a pale blankness as of a dead face. The Rothwell who built it intended to have a stately avenue from the great ironwork gates to the principal entrance, and planted his trees accordingly. But the site was cruelly exposed, and the soil was sterile, and his avenue had become a vista of warped and irregular shapes, leaning in grotesque attitudes, dwarfed and yet massive with age. In the leafiness of summer much of this singularity was lost, but when winter stripped the boughs it revealed a double line of fantastic skeletons, a fit pathway for the strangest dreams.

The gardens, with the exception of a piece close to the house, had been so long neglected that they seemed almost to have forgotten that they had ever been cultivated. Almost, but not quite, for they had not the innocence of the original wilderness. There were tokens of a contest. The plants and grasses that possessed the soil were obviously weeds, and the degraded survivals of a gentler growth lurked among them overborne and half strangled. There was a suggestion of murderous triumph in the coarse leaves of the mulleins and docks that had rooted themselves as in a conquered inheritance, and the little undulations which marked the borders and bits of rock-work of half a century earlier looked curiously like neglected graves.

It seemed to Barbara Strange, as she stood looking over it all, on the day on which Mr. Harding was to come to Mitchelhurst, that there was something novel in this aspect of desolation. She knew the place well, for it was rather more than a year since she came, at her uncle's invitation, to live there, and she had seen it with all the changes of the seasons upon it. She knew it well, but she had never thought of it as home. The little Devonshire vicarage which held father and mother, and a swarm of young sisters and brothers—almost too many to be contained within its walls—was home in the past and the present. And if the girl had dreams of the future, shy dreams which hardly revealed themselves even to her, they certainly never had Mitchelhurst Place for a background. To her it was just a halting-place on her journey into the unknown regions of life. It was like some great out-of-the-way ruinous old inn, in which one might chance to sleep for a night or two. She had merely been interested in it as a stranger, but on this October day she looked at it curiously and critically for Mr. Harding's sake. She would have liked it to welcome him, to show some signs of stately hospitality to this son of the house who was coming home, and for the first time a full sense of its dreariness and hopelessness crept into her soul. She could do nothing, she felt absurdly small, the great house seemed to cast a melancholy shadow over her, as she went to and fro in the bit of ground that was still recognised as a garden, gathering the few blossoms that autumn had spared.

Barbara meant the flowers to brighten the rooms in which they lived, but she looked a little doubtfully into her basket while she walked towards the house. They were so colourless and frail, it seemed to her that they were just fit to be emptied out over somebody's grave. "Oh," she said to herself, "why didn't he come in the time of roses, or peonies, or tiger lilies? If it had been in July there might have been some real sunshine to warm the old place. Or earlier still, when the apple blossom was out—why didn't he come then? It is so sad now." And she remembered what some one had said, a few weeks before, loitering up that wide path by her side: "An old house—yes, I like old houses, but this is like a whited sepulchre, somehow. And not his own—I should not care to set up housekeeping in a corner of somebody else's sepulchre." Barbara, as her little lonely footsteps fell on the sodden earth, thought that he was perfectly right. She threw back her head, and faced the wide, blind gaze of its many-windowed front. Well, it was Mr. Harding's own family sepulchre, if that was any consolation.

Her duty as a housekeeper took her to the blue room, which Mr. Hayes had chosen for their guest, a large apartment at the side of the house, not with the bleak northern aspect of the principal entrance, but looking away towards the village, and commanding a wide prospect of meadow land. The landscape in itself was not remarkable, but it had an attraction as of swiftly varying moods. Under a midsummer sky it would lie steeped in sunshine, and dappled with shadows of little, lightly-flying clouds, content and at peace. Seen through slant lines of grey rain it was beyond measure dreary and forlorn, burdening the gazer's soul with its flat and unrelieved heaviness. One would have said at such times that it was a veritable Land of Hopelessness. Then the clouds would part, mass themselves, perhaps, into strange islands and continents, and towering piles, and the sun would go down in wild splendours of flame as of a burning world, and the level meadows would become a marvellous plain, across which one might journey into the heart of unspeakable things. Then would follow the pensive sadness of the dusk, and the silvery enchantment of moonlight. And after all these changes there would probably come a grey and commonplace morning, in which it would appear as so many acres of very tolerable grazing land, in no wise remarkable or interesting.

Barbara did not trouble herself much about the prospect. She was anxious to make sure that soap and towels had been put ready for Mr. Harding, and candles in the brass candlesticks on the chimney-piece, and ink and pens on the little old-fashioned writing-table. With a dainty instinct of grace she arranged the heavy hangings of the bed, and, seeing that a clumsy maid had left the pillow awry, she straightened and smoothed it with soft touches of a slender brown hand, as if she could sympathetically divine the sullen weariness of the head that should lie there. Then, fixing an absent gaze upon the carpet, she debated a perplexing question in her mind.

Should she, or should she not, put some flowers in Mr. Harding's room? She wanted to make him feel that he was welcome to Mitchelhurst Place, and, to her shyness, it seemed easier to express that welcome in any silent way than to put it into words. And why not? She might have done it without thinking twice about it, but her uncle's little jests, and her own loneliness, while they left her fearless in questions of right and wrong, had made her uneasy about etiquette. As she leaned against one of the carved pillars of the great bed, musing, with lips compressed and anxious brow, she almost resolved that Mr. Reynold Harding should have nothing beyond what was a matter of housewifely duty. Why should she risk a blush or a doubt for him? But even with the half-formed resolution came the remembrance of his unlucky humiliation in her service, and Barbara started from her idle attitude, and went away, singing softly to herself.

When she came back she had a little bowl of blue and white china in her hands, which she set on the writing-table near the window. It was filled with the best she could find in her basket—a pale late rosebud, with autumnal foliage red as rust (and the bud itself had lingered so long, hoping for sunshine and warmth, that it would evidently die with its secret of sweetness folded dead in its heart), a few heads of mignonette, green and run to leaf, and rather reminding of fragrance than actually breathing it; a handful of melancholy Michaelmas daisies, and two or three white asters. The girl, with warm young life in her veins, and a glow of ripe colour on her cheek stooped in smiling pity and touched that central rosebud with her lips. No doubt remained, if there had been any doubt till then—it was already withered at the core, or it must have opened wide to answer that caress.

"Don't tell me!" said Barbara to herself with a little nod. "If such a drearily doleful bouquet isn't strictly proper, it ought to be!"

It was late in the afternoon before the visitor came. There was mist like a thin shroud over the face of the earth, and little sparks of light were gleaming in the cottage windows. Reynold Harding held the reins listlessly when the driver got down to open the great wrought-iron gate, and then resigned his charge as absently as he had accepted it. He stared straight before him while the dog-cart rattled up the avenue, and suffered himself to sway idly as they bumped over mossy stones in the drive. The trees, leaning overhead, dropped a dead leaf or two on his passive hands, as if that were his share of the family property held in trust for him till that moment.

There was something coldly repellent in the stony house front, where was no sign of greeting or even of life. The driver alighted again, pulled a great bell which made a distant clangour, and then busied himself at the back of the cart with Harding's portmanteau, while the horse stood stretching its neck, and breathing audibly in the chilly stillness. There was a brief pause, during which Harding, who had not uttered a word since he started, confronted the old house with a face as neutral as its own.

Then the door flew open, a maid appeared, the luggage was carried into the hall, and Mr. Hayes came hurrying out to meet his guest. "Welcome to Mitchelhurst Place!" he exclaimed. That "Welcome to Mitchelhurst Place!" had been in his thoughts for a couple of hours at least, and now that it was uttered it seemed very quickly over. Harding, who was paying the driver out of a handful of change, dropped a couple of coins, made a hurried attempt to regain them, and finally shook hands confusedly with Mr. Hayes, while the man and the maid pursued the rolling shillings round their feet. "Thank you—you are very kind," he said, and then saw Barbara in the background. She had paused on the threshold of a firelit room, and behind her the warm radiance was glancing on a bit of white-panelled wall. Reynold hastily got rid of his financial difficulties and went forward.

"Oh, what a cold drive you must have had!" she cried, when their hands met. "You are like ice! Do come to the fire."

"We thought you would have been here sooner," said Mr. Hayes. "The days draw in now, and it gets to be very cold and damp sometimes when the sun goes down."

Harding murmured something about not having been able to get away earlier.

"This isn't the regular drawing-room, you know," his host explained. "I like space, but there is a little too much of it in that great room—you must have a look at it to-morrow. I don't care to sit by my fireside and see Barbara at her piano across an acre or two of carpet. To my mind this is big enough for two or three people."

"Quite," said Reynold.

"The yellow drawing-room they called this," the other continued.

The young man glanced round. The room was lofty and large enough for more than the two or three people of whom Mr. Hayes had spoken. But for the ruddy firelight it might have looked cold, with its cream-white walls, its rather scanty furniture, and the yellow of its curtains and chairs faded to a dim tawny hue. But the liberal warmth and light of the blazing pile on the hearth irradiated it to the furthest corner, and filled it with wavering brightness.

"It's all exactly as it was in your uncle's time," said Mr. Hayes. "When he could not go on any longer, Croft took the whole thing just as it stood, with all the old furniture. But for that I would not have come here."

"All the charm would have been lost, wouldn't it?" said Barbara.

"The charm—yes. Besides, one had need be a millionnaire to do anything with such a great empty shell. I suspect a millionnaire would find plenty to do here as it is."

"I suppose it had been neglected for a long while?" Reynold questioned with his hard utterance.

Mr. Hayes nodded, arching his brows.

"Thirty or forty years. Everything allowed to go to rack and ruin. By Jove, sir, your people must have built well, and furnished well, for things to look as they do. Well, they shall stay as they are while I am here; I'll keep the wind and the rain out of the old house, but I can do no more, and I wouldn't if I could. And when I'm gone, Croft, or whoever is master then, must see to it."

"Yes," said the young man, still looking round. "I'm glad you've left it as it used to be."

"Just as your mother would remember it. Except, of course, one must make oneself comfortable," Mr. Hayes explained apologetically. "Just a chair for me, and a piano for Barbara, you see!"

Reynold saw. There was a large eastern rug spread near the fire-place, and on it stood an easy-chair, and a little table laden with books. A shaded lamp cast its radiance on a freshly-cut page. By the fire was a low seat, which was evidently Barbara's.

"That's the way to enjoy old furniture," said Mr. Hayes. "Sit on a modern chair and look at it—eh? There's an old piano in that further corner; that's very good to look at too."

"But not to hear?" said Harding.

"You may try it."

"That's more than I may do," said Barbara, demurely.

"You tried it too much—you tried me too much," Mr. Hayes made answer. "You did not begin in a fair spirit of investigation. You were determined to find music in it."

The girl laughed and looked down.

"And I did," she murmured to herself.

"Ah, you are looking at the portraits," Mr. Hayes went on. "There are better ones than the two or three we have here. I believe your Uncle John took away a few when he left. Your grandmother used to hang over there by the fire-place. The one on the other side is good, I think—Anthony Rothwell. You must come a little more this way to look at it."

Harding followed obediently, and made various attempts to find the right position, but the picture was not placed so as to receive the full firelight, and being above the lamp it remained in shadow.

"Stay," said the old gentleman, "I'll light this candle."

He struck a match as he spoke, and the sudden illumination revealed a scornful face, and almost seemed to give it a momentary expression, as if Anthony, of Mitchelhurst Place, recognised Reynold of nowhere.

The younger man eyed the portrait coldly and deliberately.

"Well," he said, "Mr. Anthony Rothwell, my grandfather, I suppose?"

"Great-grandfather," Mr. Hayes corrected.

"Oh, you are well acquainted with the family history. Well, then, I should say that my great-grandfather was remarkably handsome, but——"

"If it comes to that you are uncommonly like him," said his host, with a little chuckle, as he looked from the painted face to the living one, and back again.

Reynold started and drew back.

"Oh, thank you!" he said, with a short laugh. If he had been permitted to continue his first remark, he would have said, "but as unpleasant-tempered a gentleman as you could find in a day's journey."

The words had been so literally on his lips that he could hardly realise that they had not been uttered when Mr. Hayes spoke.

For the moment the likeness had been complete. Then he saw how it was, laughed, and said—

"Oh, thank you."

But he flashed an uneasy glance at Barbara, who was lingering near. Was he really like that pale, bitter-lipped portrait? He fancied that her face would tell him, but she was looking fixedly at Anthony Rothwell.

"Mind you are not late for dinner, Barbara," said her uncle quickly.

She woke to radiant animation.

"I won't be," she said. "But if you are going to introduce Mr. Harding to all the pictures first——"

"I'm not going to do anything of the kind."

"That's right. Mr. Harding's ancestors won't spoil if they are kept waiting a little, but I can't answer for the fish."

"Pray don't let any dead and gone Rothwells interfere with your dinner," said Reynold. "If one's ancestors can't wait one's convenience, I don't know who can."

[CHAPTER IV.]
DINNER AND A LITTLE MUSIC.

Barbara was the first to reappear in the yellow drawing-room. She had gone away, laughing carelessly; she came back shyly, with flushed cheeks and downcast eyes. She had put on a dress which was reserved for important occasions, and she was conscious of her splendour. She felt the strings of amber beads that were wound loosely round her throat, and that rose and fell with her quickened breathing. Nay, she was conscious to the utmost end of the folds of black drapery, that followed her with a soft sound, as of a summer sea, when she crossed the pavement of the hall. For Barbara's dress was black, and its special adornment was some handsome black lace that her grandmother had given her. Something of lighter hue and texture might have better suited her age, but there was no questioning the fact that the dignified richness of her gown was admirably becoming to the girl. One hardly knew whether to call her childish or stately, and the perplexity was delightful.

Her heart was beating fast, half in apprehension and half in defiance. Over and over again while she waited she said to herself that she had not put on her best dress for Mr. Harding's sake, she had not. She did not care what he thought of her. He might come and go, just as other people might come and go. It did not matter to her. But his coming seemed somehow to have brought all the Rothwells back to life, and to have revealed the desolate pride of the old house. When she looked from Reynold's face to Anthony's, she suddenly felt that she must put on her best dress for their company. It was no matter of personal feeling, it was an instinctive and imperative sense of what the circumstances demanded. She had never been to such a dinner party in all her life.

The feeling did her credit, but it was difficult to express. Feelings are often difficult to express, and a woman has an especial difficulty in conveying the finer shades of meaning. There is an easy masculine way of accounting for her every action by supposing it aimed at men in general, or some man in particular; and thus all manner of delicate fancies and distinctions, shaped clearly in a woman's mind, may pass through the distorting medium to reach a man's apprehension as sheer coquetry. The knowledge of this possibility is apt to give even innocence an air of hesitating consciousness. Barbara was by no means certain that her uncle would understand this honour paid, not to any living young man, but to the traditions of Mitchelhurst Place, and her blushes betrayed her shame at his probable misreading of her meaning. And what would Mr. Harding himself think?

He came in with his languid, hesitating walk, looking very tall and slender in his evening dress. He had telegraphed home for that dress suit the day before. The fact that he was travelling for a week or two, with no expectation of dining anywhere but in country inns, might naturally have excused its absence, but the explanation would have been an apology, and Harding could not apologise. He would have found it easier to spend his last shilling. Perhaps, too, he had shared Barbara's feeling as to the fitness of a touch of ceremony at Mitchelhurst.

At any rate he shared her shyness. He crossed the room with evident constraint, and halted near the fire without a word. Barbara's shyness was palpitating and aflame; his was leaden and chill. She did not know what to make of his silence; she waited, and still he did not speak; she looked up and felt sure that his downcast eyes had been obliquely fixed on her.

"Uncle is last, you see," she said. "I knew he would be."

"I was afraid I might be," he replied. "A clock struck before I expected it. I suppose my watch loses, but I hadn't found it out."

"Oh, I ought to have told you," she exclaimed penitently. "That is the great clock in the hall, and it is always kept ten minutes fast. Uncle likes it for a warning. So when it strikes, he says, 'That's the hall clock; then there's plenty of time, plenty of time, I'll just finish this.' And he goes on quite happily."

"I fancied somehow that Mr. Hayes was a very punctual man."

"Because he talks so much about it. I think he reminds other people for fear they should remind him. When I first came he was always saying, 'Don't be late,' till I was quite frightened lest I should be. I couldn't believe it when he said, 'Don't be late,' and then wasn't ready."

"You are not so particular now?"

"Oh yes, I am," she answered very seriously. "It doesn't do to be late if you are the housekeeper, you know."

A faint gleam lighted Harding's face.

"Of course not; but I never was," he replied, in a respectful tone. "How long is it since you came here?"

"I came with my mother to see uncle a great many years ago, but I only came to live here last October. Uncle wanted somebody. He said it was dull."

"I should think it was. Isn't it dull for you?"

"Sometimes," said Barbara. "It isn't at all like home. That's a little house with a great many people in it—father and mother, and all my brothers and sisters, and father's pupils. And this is a big house with nobody in it."

"Till you came," said Reynold, hesitating over the little bow or glance which should have pointed his words.

"Well, there's uncle," said Barbara with a smile, "he must count for somebody. But I feel exactly like nobody when I am going in and out of all those empty rooms. You must see them to-morrow."

The clock on the chimney-piece struck, and she turned her head to look at it. "That's five minutes slow," she said.

"And the other was more than ten minutes fast."

"Yes, it gains. Do you know," said Barbara, "I always feel as if the great clock were the time, so when it fairly runs away into the future and I have to stop it, to let the world come up with it again, it seems to me almost as if I stopped my own life too."