Mrs. Carew straightened up, forgot hellebore and tobacco juice for the
moment.

"Did I tell you what Silva told me?" she asked.

"Silva?" echoed Sidney, at a loss.

"The milkman. He told me that when he came up at five o'clock this
morning, Barry came out of the gate, and that he looked AWFULLY. He
said he was pale, and that his eyes looked badly, and that he hardly
seemed to know what he was doing. And oh, my dear, I'm afraid that he's
drinking again! I'm sure of it. It's two years now since he has done
this. I think it's too bad. But you know he used to go down to town
every little while for a regular TIME with those newspaper men. He
doesn't like Santa Paloma, you know. He gets very bored here. He'll be
back in a day or two, thoroughly ashamed of himself."

Sidney did not answer, because she could not. Resentment and loyalty,
shame and heartache, kept her lips dumb. She walked to and fro in the
garden, alone in the sweet early darkness, for an hour. Then she went
indoors, and tried to amuse herself at the piano. Suddenly her face
twisted, she laid her arm along the rack, and her face on her arm; but
it was only for a moment; then she straightened up resolutely, piled
the music, closed the piano, and went upstairs.

"But perhaps I'm not old enough yet for an olive garden," she told the
stars from her window an hour later.

CHAPTER XV

Another day went by, and still there was no news from Barry. The early
autumn weather was exquisite, and Sidney, with the additional work for
the Mail that the editor's absence left for her, found herself very
busy. But life seemed suddenly to taste flat and uninteresting to her.
The sunlight was glaring, the afternoons dusty and windy, and under all
the day's duties and pleasures--the meeting of neighbors, the
children's confidences, her busy coming and going up and down the
village streets--ran a sick undercurrent of disappointment and
heartache. She went to the post-office twice, in that first long day,
for the arriving mail, and Miss Potter, pleased at these glimpses of
the lady from the Hall, chatted blithely as she pushed Italian letters,
London letters, letters from Washington and New York, through the
little wicket.

But there was not a line from Barry. On the second day Sidney began to
think of sending him a note; it might be chanced to the Bohemian Club--

But no, she wouldn't do that. If he did not care enough to write her,
she certainly wouldn't write him.