The new house had so far progressed that the gardeners were beginning to grass down the front.  During an afternoon which he was passing in marking the curve for the carriage-drive, he beheld her coming in boldly towards him from the road.  Hitherto Barnet had only caught her on the premises by stealth; and this advance seemed to show that at last her reserve had broken down.

A smile gained strength upon her face as she approached, and it was quite radiant when she came up, and said, without a trace of embarrassment, ’I find I owe you a hundred thanks—­and it comes to me quite as a surprise!  It was through your kindness that I was engaged by Mr. Downe.  Believe me, Mr. Barnet, I did not know it until yesterday, or I should have thanked you long and long ago!’

‘I had offended you—­just a trifle—­at the time, I think?’ said Barnet, smiling, ‘and it was best that you should not know.’

‘Yes, yes,’ she returned hastily.  ’Don’t allude to that; it is past and over, and we will let it be.  The house is finished almost, is it not?  How beautiful it will look when the evergreens are grown!  Do you call the style Palladian, Mr. Barnet?’

’I—­really don’t quite know what it is.  Yes, it must be Palladian, certainly.  But I’ll ask Jones, the architect; for, to tell the truth, I had not thought much about the style:  I had nothing to do with choosing it, I am sorry to say.’

She would not let him harp on this gloomy refrain, and talked on bright matters till she said, producing a small roll of paper which he had noticed in her hand all the while, ’Mr. Downe wished me to bring you this revised drawing of the late Mrs. Downe’s tomb, which the architect has just sent him.  He would like you to look it over.’

The children came up with their hoops, and she went off with them down the harbour-road as usual.  Barnet had been glad to get those words of thanks; he had been thinking for many months that he would like her to know of his share in finding her a home such as it was; and what he could not do for himself, Downe had now kindly done for him.  He returned to his desolate house with a lighter tread; though in reason he hardly knew why his tread should be light.

On examining the drawing, Barnet found that, instead of the vast altar-tomb and canopy Downe had determined on at their last meeting, it was to be a more modest memorial even than had been suggested by the architect; a coped tomb of good solid construction, with no useless elaboration at all.  Barnet was truly glad to see that Downe had come to reason of his own accord; and he returned the drawing with a note of approval.

He followed up the house-work as before, and as he walked up and down the rooms, occasionally gazing from the windows over the bulging green hills and the quiet harbour that lay between them, he murmured words and fragments of words, which, if listened to, would have revealed all the secrets of his existence.  Whatever his reason in going there, Lucy did not call again:  the walk to the shore seemed to be abandoned:  he must have thought it as well for both that it should be so, for he did not go anywhere out of his accustomed ways to endeavour to discover her.