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One September evening, four months later, when Mrs. Barnet was in perfecthealth, and Mrs. Downe but a weakening memory, an errand-boy paused torest himself in front of Mr. Barnet's old house, depositing his basket onone of the window-sills. The street was not yet lighted, but there werelights in the house, and at intervals a flitting shadow fell upon theblind at his elbow. Words also were audible from the same apartment, andthey seemed to be those of persons in violent altercation. But the boycould not gather their purport, and he went on his way.

Ten minutes afterwards the door of Barnet's house opened, and a tallclosely-veiled lady in a travelling-dress came out and descended thefreestone steps. The servant stood in the doorway watching her as shewent with a measured tread down the street. When she had been out ofsight for some minutes Barnet appeared at the door from within.

'Did your mistress leave word where she was going?' he asked.

'No, sir.'

'Is the carriage ordered to meet her anywhere?'

'No, sir.'

'Did she take a latch-key?'

'No, sir.'

Barnet went in again, sat down in his chair, and leaned back. Then insolitude and silence he brooded over the bitter emotions that filled hisheart. It was for this that he had gratuitously restored her to life,and made his union with another impossible! The evening drew on, andnobody came to disturb him. At bedtime he told the servants to retire,that he would sit up for Mrs. Barnet himself; and when they were gone heleaned his head upon his hand and mused for hours.

The clock struck one, two; still his wife came not, and, with impatienceadded to depression, he went from room to room till another weary hourhad passed. This was not altogether a new experience for Barnet; but shehad never before so prolonged her absence. At last he sat down again andfell asleep.

He awoke at six o'clock to find that she had not returned. In searchingabout the rooms he discovered that she had taken a case of jewels whichhad been hers before her marriage. At eight a note was brought him; itwas from his wife, in which she stated that she had gone by the coach tothe house of a distant relative near London, and expressed a wish thatcertain boxes, articles of clothing, and so on, might be sent to herforthwith. The note was brought to him by a waiter at the Black-BullHotel, and had been written by Mrs. Barnet immediately before she tookher place in the stage.

By the evening this order was carried out, and Barnet, with a sense ofrelief, walked out into the town. A fair had been held during the day,and the large clear moon which rose over the most prominent hill flungits light upon the booths and standings that still remained in thestreet, mixing its rays curiously with those from the flaring naphthalamps. The town was full of country-people who had come in to enjoythemselves, and on this account Barnet strolled through the streetsunobserved. With a certain recklessness he made for the harbour-road,and presently found himself by the shore, where he walked on till he cameto the spot near which his friend the kindly Mrs. Downe had lost herlife, and his own wife's life had been preserved. A tremulous pathway ofbright moonshine now stretched over the water which had engulfed them,and not a living soul was near.

Here he ruminated on their characters, and next on the young girl in whomhe now took a more sensitive interest than at the time when he had beenfree to marry her. Nothing, so far as he was aware, had ever appeared inhis own conduct to show that such an interest existed. He had made it apoint of the utmost strictness to hinder that feeling from influencing inthe faintest degree his attitude towards his wife; and this was made allthe more easy for him by the small demand Mrs. Barnet made upon hisattentions, for which she ever evinced the greatest contempt; thusunwittingly giving him the satisfaction of knowing that their severanceowed nothing to jealousy, or, indeed, to any personal behaviour of his atall. Her concern was not with him or his feelings, as she frequentlytold him; but that she had, in a moment of weakness, thrown herself awayupon a common burgher when she might have aimed at, and possibly broughtdown, a peer of the realm. Her frequent depreciation of Barnet in theseterms had at times been so intense that he was sorely tempted toretaliate on her egotism by owning that he loved at the same low level onwhich he lived; but prudence had prevailed, for which he was nowthankful.

Something seemed to sound upon the shingle behind him over and above theraking of the wave. He looked round, and a slight girlish shape appearedquite close to him, He could not see her face because it was in thedirection of the moon.

'Mr. Barnet?' the rambler said, in timid surprise. The voice was thevoice of Lucy Savile.

'Yes,' said Barnet. 'How can I repay you for this pleasure?'

'I only came because the night was so clear. I am now on my way home.'

'I am glad we have met. I want to know if you will let me do somethingfor you, to give me an occupation, as an idle man? I am sure I ought tohelp you, for I know you are almost without friends.'

She hesitated. 'Why should you tell me that?' she said.

'In the hope that you will be frank with me.'

'I am not altogether without friends here. But I am going to make alittle change in my life--to go out as a teacher of freehand drawing andpractical perspective, of course I mean on a comparatively humble scale,because I have not been specially educated for that profession. But I amsure I shall like it much.'

'You have an opening?'

'I have not exactly got it, but I have advertised for one.'

'Lucy, you must let me help you!'

'Not at all.'

'You need not think it would compromise you, or that I am indifferent todelicacy. I bear in mind how we stand. It is very unlikely that youwill succeed as teacher of the class you mention, so let me do somethingof a different kind for you. Say what you would like, and it shall bedone.'

'No; if I can't be a drawing-mistress or governess, or something of thatsort, I shall go to India and join my brother.'

'I wish I could go abroad, anywhere, everywhere with you, Lucy, and leavethis place and its associations for ever!'

She played with the end of her bonnet-string, and hastily turned aside.'Don't ever touch upon that kind of topic again,' she said, with a quickseverity not free from anger. 'It simply makes it impossible for me tosee you, much less receive any guidance from you. No, thank you, Mr.Barnet; you can do nothing for me at present; and as I suppose myuncertainty will end in my leaving for India, I fear you never will. Ifever I think you can do anything, I will take the trouble to ask you.Till then, good-bye.'

The tone of her latter words was equivocal, and while he remained indoubt whether a gentle irony was or was not inwrought with their sound,she swept lightly round and left him alone. He saw her form get smallerand smaller along the damp belt of sea-sand between ebb and flood; andwhen she had vanished round the cliff into the harbour-road, he himselffollowed in the same direction.

That her hopes from an advertisement should be the single thread whichheld Lucy Savile in England was too much for Barnet. On reaching thetown he went straight to the residence of Downe, now a widower with fourchildren. The young motherless brood had been sent to bed about aquarter of an hour earlier, and when Barnet entered he found Downesitting alone. It was the same room as that from which the family hadbeen looking out for Downe at the beginning of the year, when Downe hadslipped into the gutter and his wife had been so enviably tender towardshim. The old neatness had gone from the house; articles lay in placeswhich could show no reason for their presence, as if momentarilydeposited there some months ago, and forgotten ever since; there were noflowers; things were jumbled together on the furniture which should havebeen in cupboards; and the place in general had that stagnant,unrenovated air which usually pervades the maimed home of the widower.

Downe soon renewed his customary full-worded lament over his wife, andeven when he had worked himself up to tears, went on volubly, as if alistener were a luxury to be enjoyed whenever he could be caught.

'She was a treasure beyond compare, Mr. Barnet! I shall never see suchanother. Nobody now to nurse me--nobody to console me in those dailytroubles, you know, Barnet, which make consolation so necessary to anature like mine. It would be unbecoming to repine, for her spirit'shome was elsewhere--the tender light in her eyes always showed it; but itis a long dreary time that I have before me, and nobody else can everfill the void left in my heart by her loss--nobody--nobody!' And Downewiped his eyes again.

'She was a good woman in the highest sense,' gravely answered Barnet,who, though Downe's words drew genuine compassion from his heart, couldnot help feeling that a tender reticence would have been a finer tributeto Mrs. Downe's really sterling virtues than such a second-class lamentas this.

'I have something to show you,' Downe resumed, producing from a drawer asheet of paper on which was an elaborate design for a canopied tomb.'This has been sent me by the architect, but it is not exactly what Iwant.'

'You have got Jones to do it, I see, the man who is carrying out myhouse,' said Barnet, as he glanced at the signature to the drawing.

'Yes, but it is not quite what I want. I want something morestriking--more like a tomb I have seen in St. Paul's Cathedral. Nothingless will do justice to my feelings, and how far short of them that willfall!'

Barnet privately thought the design a sufficiently imposing one as itstood, even extravagantly ornate; but, feeling that he had no right tocriticize, he said gently, 'Downe, should you not live more in yourchildren's lives at the present time, and soften the sharpness of regretfor your own past by thinking of their future?'

'Yes, yes; but what can I do more?' asked Downe, wrinkling his foreheadhopelessly.

It was with anxious slowness that Barnet produced his reply--the secretobject of his visit to-night. 'Did you not say one day that you ought byrights to get a governess for the children?'

Downe admitted that he had said so, but that he could not see his way toit. 'The kind of woman I should like to have,' he said, 'would be ratherbeyond my means. No; I think I shall send them to school in the townwhen they are old enough to go out alone.'

'Now, I know of something better than that. The late Lieutenant Savile'sdaughter, Lucy, wants to do something for herself in the way of teaching.She would be inexpensive, and would answer your purpose as well asanybody for six or twelve months. She would probably come daily if youwere to ask her, and so your housekeeping arrangements would not be muchaffected.'

'I thought she had gone away,' said the solicitor, musing. 'Where doesshe live?'

Barnet told him, and added that, if Downe should think of her assuitable, he would do well to call as soon as possible, or she might beon the wing. 'If you do see her,' he said, 'it would be advisable not tomention my name. She is rather stiff in her ideas of me, and it mightprejudice her against a course if she knew that I recommended it.'

Downe promised to give the subject his consideration, and nothing morewas said about it just then. But when Barnet rose to go, which was nottill nearly bedtime, he reminded Downe of the suggestion and went up thestreet to his own solitary home with a sense of satisfaction at hispromising diplomacy in a charitable cause.