arbara should have shown an easier bearing and more
gaiety; so I supposed and hoped. The fact refuted me; silent, cold, and
distant, she seemed in even greater discomfort than when we had a
companion. Her mood called up a like in me, and I began to ask myself
whether for this I had done well to drive poor Nell away.

Thus in gloom we made ready to set forth. Myself prepared to mount my
horse, I offered to hand Barbara into the coach. Then she looked at me;
I noted it, for she had not done so much for an hour past; a slight
colour came into her cheeks, she glanced round the interior of the
coach; it was indeed wide and spacious for one traveller.

"You ride to-day also?" she asked.

The sting that had tormented me was still alive; I could not deny myself
the pleasure of a retort so apt. I bowed low and deferentially, saying,
"I have learnt my station. I would not be so forward as to sit in the
coach with you." The flush on her cheeks deepened suddenly; she
stretched out her hand a little way towards me, and her lips parted as
though she were about to speak. But her hand fell again, and her lips
shut on unuttered words.

"As you will," she said coldly. "Pray bid them set out."

Of our journey I will say no more. There is nothing in it that I take
pleasure in telling, and to write its history would be to accuse either
Barbara or myself. For two days we travelled together, she in her coach,
I on horseback. Come to London, we were told that my lord was at
Hatchstead; having despatched our borrowed equipage and servant to their
mistress, and with them the amount of my debt and a most grateful
message, we proceeded on our road, Barbara in a chaise, I again riding.
All the way Barbara shunned me as though I had the plague, and I on my
side showed no desire to be with a companion so averse from my society.
On my life I was driven half-mad, and had that night at Canterbury come
again--well, Heaven be thanked that temptation comes sometimes at
moments when virtue also has attractions, or which of us would stand?
And the night we spent on the road, decorum forbade that we should so
much as speak, much less sup, together; and the night we lay in London,
I spent at one end of the town and she at the other. At least I showed
no forwardness; to that I was sworn, and adhered most obstinately. Thus
we came to Hatchstead, better strangers than ever we had left Dover,
and, although safe and sound from bodily perils and those wiles of