after he had left it.

Except that her eyes seemed darker, Mrs. Noel had not changed. If she
had shown the faintest sign of self-pity, the girl would never have felt,
as she did now, so sorry and upset.

Leaving the stables, she saw that the wind was driving up a huge, white,
shining cloud. "Isn't it going to be fine after all!" she thought.

Re-entering the house by an old and so-called secret stairway that led
straight to the library, she had to traverse that great dark room.
There, buried in an armchair in front of the hearth she saw Miltoun with
a book on his knee, not reading, but looking up at the picture of the old
Cardinal. She hurried on, tiptoeing over the soft carpet, holding her
breath, fearful of disturbing the queer interview, feeling guilty, too,
of her new knowledge, which she did not mean to impart. She had burnt
her fingers once at the flame between them; she would not do so a second
time!

Through the window at the far end she saw that the cloud had burst; it
was raining furiously. She regained her bedroom unseen. In spite of her
joy out there on the moor, this last adventure of her girlhood had not
been all success; she had again the old sensations, the old doubts, the
dissatisfaction which she had thought dead. Those two! To shut one's
eyes, and be happy--was it possible! A great rainbow, the nearest she
had ever seen, had sprung up in the park, and was come to earth again in
some fields close by. The sun was shining out already through the
wind-driven bright rain. Jewels of blue had begun to star the black and
white and golden clouds. A strange white light-ghost of Spring passing
in this last violent outburst-painted the leaves of every tree; and a
hundred savage hues had come down like a motley of bright birds on moor
and fields.

The moment of desperate beauty caught Barbara by the throat. Its spirit
of galloping wildness flew straight into her heart. She clasped her
hands across her breast to try and keep that moment. Far out, a cuckoo
hooted-and the immortal call passed on the wind. In that call all the
beauty, and colour, and rapture of life seemed to be flying by. If she
could only seize and evermore have it in her heart, as the buttercups out
there imprisoned the sun, or the fallen raindrops on the sweetbriars
round the windows enclosed all changing light! If only there were no
chains, no walls, and finality were dead!

Her clock struck ten. At this time to-morrow!