all,' he said. 'There is no woman in England I would so soon trust on
such an errand. I am afraid there will not be any brilliant result;
still I shall take it as the kindest and nicest thing if she will try it,
and not be frightened at a repulse.'

When Barnet and Downe had parted, the former went to the Town Savings-
Bank, of which he was a trustee, and endeavoured to forget his troubles
in the contemplation of low sums of money, and figures in a network of
red and blue lines. He sat and watched the working-people making their
deposits, to which at intervals he signed his name. Before he left in
the afternoon Downe put his head inside the door.

'Emily has seen Mrs. Barnet,' he said, in a low voice. 'She has got Mrs.
Barnet's promise to take her for a drive down to the shore to-morrow, if
it is fine. Good afternoon!'

Barnet shook Downe by the hand without speaking, and Downe went away.

CHAPTER IV

The next day was as fine as the arrangement could possibly require. As
the sun passed the meridian and declined westward, the tall shadows from
the scaffold-poles of Barnet's rising residence streaked the ground as
far as to the middle of the highway. Barnet himself was there inspecting
the progress of the works for the first time during several weeks. A
building in an old-fashioned town five-and-thirty years ago did not, as
in the modern fashion, rise from the sod like a booth at a fair. The
foundations and lower courses were put in and allowed to settle for many
weeks before the superstructure was built up, and a whole summer of
drying was hardly sufficient to do justice to the important issues
involved. Barnet stood within a window-niche which had as yet received
no frame, and thence looked down a slope into the road. The wheels of a
chaise were heard, and then his handsome Xantippe, in the company of Mrs.
Downe, drove past on their way to the shore. They were driving slowly;
there was a pleasing light in Mrs. Downe's face, which seemed faintly to
reflect itself upon the countenance of her companion--that politesse du
coeur which was so natural to her having possibly begun already to work
results. But whatever the situation, Barnet resolved not to interfere,
or do anything to hazard the promise of the day. He might well afford to
trust the issue to another when he could never direct it but to ill
himself. His wife's clenched rein-hand in its lemon-coloured glove, her
stiff erect figure, clad in