Barnet accompanied him to the shore, where, finding that no trace had as yet been seen of Mrs. Downe, and that his stay would be of no avail, he left Downe with his friends and the young doctor, and once more hastened back to his own house.

At the door he met Charlson.  ‘Well!’ Barnet said.

‘I have just come down,’ said the doctor; ’we have done everything, but without result.  I sympathize with you in your bereavement.’

Barnet did not much appreciate Charlson’s sympathy, which sounded to his ears as something of a mockery from the lips of a man who knew what Charlson knew about their domestic relations.  Indeed there seemed an odd spark in Charlson’s full black eye as he said the words; but that might have been imaginary.

‘And, Mr. Barnet,’ Charlson resumed, ’that little matter between us—­I hope to settle it finally in three weeks at least.’

‘Never mind that now,’ said Barnet abruptly.  He directed the surgeon to go to the harbour in case his services might even now be necessary there:  and himself entered the house.

The servants were coming from his wife’s chamber, looking helplessly at each other and at him.  He passed them by and entered the room, where he stood mutely regarding the bed for a few minutes, after which he walked into his own dressing-room adjoining, and there paced up and down.  In a minute or two he noticed what a strange and total silence had come over the upper part of the house; his own movements, muffled as they were by the carpet, seemed noisy, and his thoughts to disturb the air like articulate utterances.  His eye glanced through the window.  Far down the road to the harbour a roof detained his gaze:  out of it rose a red chimney, and out of the red chimney a curl of smoke, as from a fire newly kindled.  He had often seen such a sight before.  In that house lived Lucy Savile; and the smoke was from the fire which was regularly lighted at this time to make her tea.

After that he went back to the bedroom, and stood there some time regarding his wife’s silent form.  She was a woman some years older than himself, but had not by any means overpassed the maturity of good looks and vigour.  Her passionate features, well-defined, firm, and statuesque in life, were doubly so now:  her mouth and brow, beneath her purplish black hair, showed only too clearly that the turbulency of character which had made a bear-garden of his house had been no temporary phase of her existence.  While he reflected, he suddenly said to himself, I wonder if all has been done?

The thought was led up to by his having fancied that his wife’s features lacked in its complete form the expression which he had been accustomed to associate with the faces of those whose spirits have fled for ever.  The effacement of life was not so marked but that, entering uninformed, he might have supposed her sleeping.  Her complexion was that seen in the numerous faded portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds;