orget their first visit, and when the windows
were glazed, and the handsome staircase spread its broad low steps into
the hall, they came again, prancing in unwearied succession through every
room from ground-floor to attics, while Lucy stood waiting for them at
the door. Barnet, who rarely missed a day in coming to inspect progress,
stepped out from the drawing-room.

'I could not keep them out,' she said, with an apologetic blush. 'I
tried to do so very much: but they are rather wilful, and we are directed
to walk this way for the sea air.'

'Do let them make the house their regular playground, and you yours,'
said Barnet. 'There is no better place for children to romp and take
their exercise in than an empty house, particularly in muddy or damp
weather such as we shall get a good deal of now; and this place will not
be furnished for a long long time--perhaps never. I am not at all
decided about it.'

'O, but it must!' replied Lucy, looking round at the hall. 'The rooms
are excellent, twice as high as ours; and the views from the windows are
so lovely.'

'I daresay, I daresay,' he said absently.

'Will all the furniture be new?' she asked.

'All the furniture be new--that's a thing I have not thought of. In fact
I only come here and look on. My father's house would have been large
enough for me, but another person had a voice in the matter, and it was
settled that we should build. However, the place grows upon me; its
recent associations are cheerful, and I am getting to like it fast.'

A certain uneasiness in Lucy's manner showed that the conversation was
taking too personal a turn for her. 'Still, as modern tastes develop,
people require more room to gratify them in,' she said, withdrawing to
call the children; and serenely bidding him good afternoon she went on
her way.

Barnet's life at this period was singularly lonely, and yet he was
happier than he could have expected. His wife's estrangement and
absence, which promised to be permanent, left him free as a boy in his
movements, and the solitary walks that he took gave him ample opportunity
for chastened reflection on what might have been his lot if he had only
shown wisdom enough to claim Lucy Savile when there was no bar between
their lives, and she was to be had for the asking. He would occasionally
call at the house of his friend Downe; but there was scarcely enough in
common between their two natures to make them more than friends of that