Barnet expressed his warmest thanks for the well-intentioned proposition.  There was reason in Mrs. Downe’s fear—­that he owned.  ’But do let her call,’ 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 velvet and lace, and her boldly-outlined face, passed on, exhibiting their owner as one fixed for ever above the level of her companion—­socially by her early breeding, and materially by her higher cushion.