‘A common headstone?’ said Barnet.

’Yes.  I held out for some time for the addition of a footstone at least.  But he said, “O no—­he couldn’t afford it."’

’Ah, well—­his family is growing up, poor fellow, and his expenses are getting serious.’

‘Yes, exactly,’ said Jones, as if the subject were none of his.  And again directing Barnet’s attention to the wall-papers, the bustling architect left him to keep some other engagement.

‘A common headstone,’ murmured Barnet, left again to himself.  He mused a minute or two, and next began looking over and selecting from the patterns; but had not long been engaged in the work when he heard another footstep on the gravel without, and somebody enter the open porch.

Barnet went to the door—­it was his manservant in search of him.

‘I have been trying for some time to find you, sir,’ he said.  ’This letter has come by the post, and it is marked immediate.  And there’s this one from Mr. Downe, who called just now wanting to see you.’  He searched his pocket for the second.

Barnet took the first letter—­it had a black border, and bore the London postmark.  It was not in his wife’s handwriting, or in that of any person he knew; but conjecture soon ceased as he read the page, wherein he was briefly informed that Mrs. Barnet had died suddenly on the previous day, at the furnished villa she had occupied near London.

Barnet looked vaguely round the empty hall, at the blank walls, out of the doorway.  Drawing a long palpitating breath, and with eyes downcast, he turned and climbed the stairs slowly, like a man who doubted their stability.  The fact of his wife having, as it were, died once already, and lived on again, had entirely dislodged the possibility of her actual death from his conjecture.  He went to the landing, leant over the balusters, and after a reverie, of whose duration he had but the faintest notion, turned to the window and stretched his gaze to the cottage further down the road, which was visible from his landing, and from which Lucy still walked to the solicitor’s house by a cross path.  The faint words that came from his moving lips were simply, ‘At last!’

Then, almost involuntarily, Barnet fell down on his knees and murmured some incoherent words of thanksgiving.  Surely his virtue in restoring his wife to life had been rewarded!  But, as if the impulse struck uneasily on his conscience, he quickly rose, brushed the dust from his trousers and set himself to think of his next movements.  He could not start for London for some hours; and as he had no preparations to make that could not be made in half-an-hour, he mechanically descended and resumed his occupation of turning over the wall-papers.  They had all got brighter for him, those papers.  It was all changed—­who would sit in the rooms that they were to line?  He went on to muse upon Lucy’s conduct in so frequently coming to the house with the children; her occasional blush in speaking to him; her evident interest in him.  What woman can in the long run avoid being interested in a man whom she knows to be devoted to her?  If human solicitation could ever effect anything, there should be no going to India for Lucy now.  All the papers previously chosen seemed wrong in their shades, and he began from the beginning to choose again.