Here he ruminated on their characters, and next on the young girl in whom he now took a more sensitive interest than at the time when he had been free to marry her.  Nothing, so far as he was aware, had ever appeared in his own conduct to show that such an interest existed.  He had made it a point of the utmost strictness to hinder that feeling from influencing in the faintest degree his attitude towards his wife; and this was made all the more easy for him by the small demand Mrs. Barnet made upon his attentions, for which she ever evinced the greatest contempt; thus unwittingly giving him the satisfaction of knowing that their severance owed nothing to jealousy, or, indeed, to any personal behaviour of his at all.  Her concern was not with him or his feelings, as she frequently told him; but that she had, in a moment of weakness, thrown herself away upon a common burgher when she might have aimed at, and possibly brought down, a peer of the realm.  Her frequent depreciation of Barnet in these terms had at times been so intense that he was sorely tempted to retaliate on her egotism by owning that he loved at the same low level on which he lived; but prudence had prevailed, for which he was now thankful.

Something seemed to sound upon the shingle behind him over and above the raking of the wave.  He looked round, and a slight girlish shape appeared quite close to him, He could not see her face because it was in the direction of the moon.

‘Mr. Barnet?’ the rambler said, in timid surprise.  The voice was the voice of Lucy Savile.

‘Yes,’ said Barnet.  ‘How can I repay you for this pleasure?’

‘I only came because the night was so clear.  I am now on my way home.’

’I am glad we have met.  I want to know if you will let me do something for you, to give me an occupation, as an idle man?  I am sure I ought to help you, for I know you are almost without friends.’

She hesitated.  ‘Why should you tell me that?’ she said.

‘In the hope that you will be frank with me.’

’I am not altogether without friends here.  But I am going to make a little change in my life—­to go out as a teacher of freehand drawing and practical perspective, of course I mean on a comparatively humble scale, because I have not been specially educated for that profession.  But I am sure I shall like it much.’

‘You have an opening?’

‘I have not exactly got it, but I have advertised for one.’

‘Lucy, you must let me help you!’

‘Not at all.’

’You need not think it would compromise you, or that I am indifferent to delicacy.  I bear in mind how we stand.  It is very unlikely that you will succeed as teacher of the class you mention, so let me do something of a different kind for you.  Say what you would like, and it shall be done.’

’No; if I can’t be a drawing-mistress or governess, or something of that sort, I shall go to India and join my brother.’