As the poor lady could not ease her
conscience this way, she determined at least to be charitable, and
soon had the satisfaction of finding her porch thronged every
morning by the raggedest, idlest, most drunken, hypocritical, and
worthless tramps in Christendom.
But human hearts are as prone to change as the leaves of the creeper
on the wall, and in the course of time, hearing nothing of her
husband, Barbara could sit unmoved whilst her mother and friends
said in her hearing, 'Well, what has happened is for the best.' She
began to think so herself; for even now she could not summon up that
lopped and mutilated form without a shiver, though whenever her mind
flew back to her early wedded days, and the man who had stood beside
her then, a thrill of tenderness moved her, which if quickened by
his living presence might have become strong. She was young and
inexperienced, and had hardly on his late return grown out of the
capricious fancies of girlhood.
But he did not come again, and when she thought of his word that he
would return once more, if living, and how unlikely he was to break
his word, she gave him up for dead. So did her parents; so also did
another person--that man of silence, of irresistible incisiveness,
of still countenance, who was as awake as seven sentinels when he
seemed to be as sound asleep as the figures on his family monument.
Lord Uplandtowers, though not yet thirty, had chuckled like a
caustic fogey of threescore when he heard of Barbara's terror and
flight at her husband's return, and of the latter's prompt
departure.
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