LITMIR.BIZ

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as if she herself were still coming and going with fleet, graceful steps about the house of which she had been for so many years the proud and happy mistress. She liked to feel that she was still dispensing hospitality in the stately dining-room, from the walls of which looked down an odd collection of family portraits, belonging to every period of English history and of English art; some, indeed the majority, so little worthy from the artistic point of view, that they had been considered unfit to take their places on the cedarwood panels of the great reception rooms.

      Barbara found the doctor waiting for her in the hall, walking impatiently up and down, his big head thrust forward, his hands clasped behind his back. He was in high good humour, well pleased with the new inmate of the Priory, and impressed more than he knew by Barbara's fragile beauty and air of high breeding. In theory no living man was less amenable to the influence of feminine charm or of outward appearance, but in actual day-to-day life Alexander McKirdy, doubtless owing to the old law of opposites, had a keen feeling for physical perfection, and all unconsciously he abhorred ugliness.

      As Mrs. Rebell came silently towards him from behind the Chinese screen which concealed the door leading from the great hall to the dining-room, he shot but at her a quick approving glance. Her white gown, made more plainly than was the fashion of that hour, fell in austere folds about her upright slender figure; the knowledge that she was about to see Madame Sampiero had brought a flush to her pale cheeks and a light to her dark eyes. Without a word the doctor turned and led the way up the winding stair with which Barbara was already feeling a pleasant sense of familiarity; an old staircase is the last of household strongholds which surrenders to a stranger.

       When they reached the landing opposite the music gallery, the doctor turned down the wide corridor, and Barbara, with a sudden feeling of surprise, realised that this upper floor had become the real centre—the heart, as it were—of Chancton Priory. The great hall, the drawing-room in which she had received Doctor McKirdy's odd confidences, even the dining-room where a huge fire blazed in her honour, had about them a strangely unlived-in and deserted air; but up here were light and brightness, indeed, even some of the modern prettinesses of life—huge pots of fragrant hothouse flowers, soft rugs under-foot.

      When opposite to the high door with which the corridor terminated, Doctor McKirdy turned and looked for a moment at his companion; and, as he did so, it seemed to Barbara that he was deliberately smoothing out the deep lines carved by ever-present watchfulness and anxiety on the rugged surface of his face. Then he knocked twice, sharp quick knocks, signal-like in their precision; and, scarcely waiting for an answer, he walked straight through, saying as he did so, "Just wait here a moment—I will make you a sign when to come forward."

      And then, standing just within the door, and gazing with almost painful eagerness before her, Mrs. Rebell saw as in a vision that which recalled, and to a startling degree, a great Roman lying-in-state to which she had been taken, as a very young girl, during a winter spent by her with her parents in Italy.

      Between the door and the four curtainless windows, through one of which now gleamed the young October moon, Barbara became aware that on a long narrow couch, placed catafalque fashion, in the centre of the room, an absolutely immobile figure lay stretched out. The light shed from candles set in branching candlesticks about the room threw every detail of the still figure, and especially of the head supported on high pillows, into prominent relief.

      From the black satin cushion on which rested two upright slippered feet, the gazer's fascinated eyes travelled up—past the purple velvet gown arranged straightly and stiffly from waist to hem, past the cross-over lace shawl which almost wholly concealed the velvet bodice, and so to the still beautiful oval face, and the elaborately dressed, thickly powdered hair. On the mittened hands, stiffly folded together, gleamed a diamond and a ruby. There was present no distortion—the whole figure, only looking unnaturally long, was simply set in trembling immobility.

      Madame Sampiero—the Barbara Rebell of another day—was still made up for the part she chose to play to the restricted audience which represented the great band of former adorers and friends, some of whom would fain have been about her still had she been willing to admit them to her presence in this, her time of humiliation.

      As the door had opened, her large, wide open deep blue eyes, still full of the pride of life, and capable of expressing an extraordinary amount of feeling, turned with a flash of inquiry to the left, and a touch of real colour—a sign of how deeply she was moved—came into the delicately moulded, slightly rouged cheeks. The maid who stood by—a gaunt Scotchwoman who, by dint of Doctor McKirdy's fierceness of manner, and the foreknowledge of constantly increased wages, had been turned into little more than a trained automaton—retreated noiselessly through a door giving access to a room beyond, leaving the doctor, his patient, and Mrs. Rebell alone.

      Tears started to Barbara's eyes, but they were brought there, not so much by the sight she saw before her, as by the sudden change which that same sight seemed to produce in the elderly man who now stood by her. Doctor McKirdy's whole manner had altered. He had become quite gentle, and his face was even twisted into a wry smile as he put his small strong hands over the trembling fingers of Madame Sampiero.

      "Well, here's Mrs. Barbara Rebell at last!" he said, "and I'm minded to think that Chancton Priory will find her a decided acquisition!"

      Barbara was amazed, indescribably moved and touched, to see the light which came over the stiff face, as the dark blue eyes met and became fixed on her own. Words, nay, not words, but strange sounds signifying—what did they signify?—came from the trembling lips. Mrs. Rebell herself soon learned to interpret Madame Sampiero's muffled utterances, but on this first occasion she thought Doctor McKirdy's quick understanding and translating of her godmother's meaning almost uncanny.

      "Madam trusts you enjoyed a good journey," he said; and then, after apparently listening intently for a moment to the hoarse muttered sounds, "Ay, I've told her that already—Madam wants you to understand that the rooms prepared for you were those preferred by Mrs. Richard." He bent forward, and put his hand to his ear, for even he had difficulty in understanding the now whispered mutterings, "Ay, ay, I will tell her, never fear—Madam wishes you to understand that there are some letters of your mother's—she thinks you would like to see them and she will give them to you to-morrow. And now if you please she will say good-night."

      Following a sudden impulse, Mrs. Rebell bent down and kissed the trembling mittened hands. "I do thank you," she said, almost inaudibly, "very very gratefully for having allowed me to come here."

      The words seemed, to the woman who uttered them, poor and inadequate, for her heart was very full, but Doctor McKirdy, glancing sharply at their still listener, saw that Madame Sampiero was content, and that his experiment—for so the old Scotchman regarded the coming of Barbara Rebell to Chancton—was likely to be successful.

      Had Mrs. Rebell, as child and girl, lived the ordinary life of a young Englishwoman, she would have realised, from the first moment of her arrival at Chancton Priory, how strange, how abnormal were the conditions of existence there; but the quiet solitude brooding over the great house suited her mood, and soothed her sore humiliation of spirit.

      As she moved about, that first morning, making acquaintance with each of the stately deserted rooms lying to the right and left of the great hall, and seeking to find likenesses to her father—ay, even to herself—in the portraits of those dead and gone men and women whose eyes seemed to follow her as she came and went among them, she felt a deep voiceless regret in the knowledge that, but for so slight a chain of accidents, here she might have come six years ago.

      In fancy she saw herself, as in that case she would have been by now, a woman perhaps in years—for Barbara, brought up entirely on the Continent, thought girlhood ended at twenty—but a joyous single-hearted creature, her only past a not unhappy girlhood, and six long peaceful years spent in this beautiful place, well spent too in tending the stricken woman to whom she already felt so close a tie of inherited love and duty.

       Ah! how much more vividly that which might have been came before her when she heard the words with which Mrs. Turke greeted her—Mrs. Turke resplendent in a black satin gown, much flounced and gathered, trimmed with bright red bows, and set

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