‘But she knew I was coming to-night?’

‘O yes, sir.’

‘Go up and tell her I am come.’

The servant did so; but the mistress of the house merely transmitted her former words.

Barnet said nothing more, and presently sat down to his lonely meal, which was eaten abstractedly, the domestic scene he had lately witnessed still impressing him by its contrast with the situation here.  His mind fell back into past years upon a certain pleasing and gentle being whose face would loom out of their shades at such times as these.  Barnet turned in his chair, and looked with unfocused eyes in a direction southward from where he sat, as if he saw not the room but a long way beyond.  ‘I wonder if she lives there still!’ he said.

CHAPTER II

He rose with a sudden rebelliousness, put on his hat and coat, and went out of the house, pursuing his way along the glistening pavement while eight o’clock was striking from St. Mary’s tower, and the apprentices and shopmen were slamming up the shutters from end to end of the town.  In two minutes only those shops which could boast of no attendant save the master or the mistress remained with open eyes.  These were ever somewhat less prompt to exclude customers than the others:  for their owners’ ears the closing hour had scarcely the cheerfulness that it possessed for the hired servants of the rest.  Yet the night being dreary the delay was not for long, and their windows, too, blinked together one by one.

During this time Barnet had proceeded with decided step in a direction at right angles to the broad main thoroughfare of the town, by a long street leading due southward.  Here, though his family had no more to do with the flax manufacture, his own name occasionally greeted him on gates and warehouses, being used allusively by small rising tradesmen as a recommendation, in such words as ’Smith, from Barnet & Co.’—­’Robinson, late manager at Barnet’s.’  The sight led him to reflect upon his father’s busy life, and he questioned if it had not been far happier than his own.

The houses along the road became fewer, and presently open ground appeared between them on either side, the track on the right hand rising to a higher level till it merged in a knoll.  On the summit a row of builders’ scaffold-poles probed the indistinct sky like spears, and at their bases could be discerned the lower courses of a building lately begun.  Barnet slackened his pace and stood for a few moments without leaving the centre of the road, apparently not much interested in the sight, till suddenly his eye was caught by a post in the fore part of the ground bearing a white board at the top.  He went to the rails, vaulted over, and walked in far enough to discern painted upon the board ’Chateau Ringdale.’

A dismal irony seemed to lie in the words, and its effect was to irritate him.  Downe, then, had spoken truly.  He stuck his umbrella into the sod, and seized the post with both hands, as if intending to loosen and throw it down.  Then, like one bewildered by an opposition which would exist none the less though its manifestations were removed, he allowed his arms to sink to his side.