im abroad,
succeeding governments vied with one another to keep him abroad. The
vice-royalty of India followed almost automatically; he spent two years
as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to oblige his party leaders and was now in
the full vigour of middle age with nothing to do. The House of Lords
offered no opportunity to an incurably bad debater; and the radicals by
destroying the constitution, bullying the king and playing with
revolution had made it a place of arid pomp, whose futility took away
something of a man's dignity every time that he went there.
Nevertheless, once a viceroy, always a viceroy, as his daughter
sometimes reminded him. Lord Crawleigh ruled Berkeley Square and
Crawleigh Abbey as though he were still in India, as though, too, he
were suppressing the Mutiny single-handed. "Once a mutineer, always a
mutineer," Lady Barbara would occasionally say of herself.

This week-end she had irritated her parents by choosing a train
convenient neither to family nor guests, by arriving speechless with
fatigue and by retiring to her bedroom and announcing that she would
probably stay there. Lady Crawleigh felt that prudence, after so long
delay, might have timed its coming more opportunely; a houseful of young
people could be trusted, in dealing with her sentences, to complete the
ruin which her husband had begun; but late hours, excitement and the
legacy of her illness had reduced Barbara's strength until Dr. Gaisford
pronounced that he could not answer for the result if any pressure were
put upon her.

Though the windows were now thickly curtained and a bright fire was
burning, Barbara could never come into her bedroom without a shiver. In
the spring and summer of 1915, when Crawleigh Abbey was a military
hospital, she had worked by night and lain awake by day, deliberately
and with the sun shining on her face, for fear of dreaming. Madness or
death could be no worse than the torture of being pitilessly and
unceasingly watched when she knew that she was only dreaming but could
not wake. Of late the form of her dreams had changed, growing less
defined; there was no longer the old accusing pair of eyes to reproach
and spy on her as soon as the room was in darkness, but she was
conscious of vague presences which she could not clearly see. After
fainting in the train a month before, she had heard Eric's voice in her
sleep, though she could not recognize a face which she had never seen;
none of her dream-faces had fea