of him would thaw her
heart. For a while the child was quiet and subdued, for there was that
about his mother's face which awed him. At last, weary of being still,
he swung round on his heel after a fashion that he had, and said:

"Cook says that now father is dead I'm master here, and everyone will
have to do what I tell them."

Barbara lifted her head and looked at him, and something in her
fawn-like eyes, a mute reproach, pierced to the boy's heart. At any
rate, he began to whimper and left the room.

There was little in the remark, which was such as a vulgar servant might
well make thoughtlessly. Yet it brought home to Barbara the grim fact
of her loss more completely perhaps than anything had done. Her beloved
husband was dead, of no more account in the world than those who had
passed from it at Eastwich a thousand years ago. He was dead, and soon
would be forgotten by all save her, and she was alone; in her heart
utterly alone.

The summer came and everyone grew cheerful. Aunt Thompson arrived at
the Hall to stay, and urged Barbara to put away past things and resign
herself to the will of Providence--as she had done in the case of the
departed Samuel.

"After all," she said, "it might have been worse. You might have been
called upon to nurse an invalid for twenty years, and when at last he
went, have found the best part of your life gone, as I did," and she
sighed heavily. "As it is, you still look quite a girl, having kept your
figure so well; you are comfortably off and have a good position, and in
short there is no knowing what may happen in the future. You must come
up and stay with me this winter, dear, instead of poking yourself away
in this damp old house, where everybody seems to die of consumption.
Really it is a sort of family vault, and if you stop here long enough
you will catch something too."

Barbara thanked her with a sad little smile, and answered that she would
think over her kind invitation and write to her later. But in the end
she never went to London, at least not to stay, perhaps it reminded her
too vividly of her life there with Anthony. At Eastwich she could bear
such memories, but for some unexplained reason it was otherwise in
London.

Indeed, in the course of time her aunt gave up the attempt to persuade
her, and devoted herself to forwarding the fortunes of her other pretty
nieces, Barbara's sisters, two of whom, it should be said, already she
had settled comfortably in l