At last she spoke, "Please say nothing of our walk round by Chancton Priory." And when, some hours later, there came a letter from Doctor McKirdy declaring that Madame Sampiero was not well, and longed for Mrs. Rebell's presence, Daniel O'Flaherty thought he understood. A pang of miserable self-reproach struck his heart and conscience. What right had he to have put this woman to the torture--to take on himself the part of Providence? After they had all seen Barbara off, after he had noted her very quiet but determined rejection of Berwick's company on the way to Chancton Priory, Daniel O'Flaherty was in no mood to go for the walk to which Miss Berwick had been looking forward all that afternoon. CHAPTER XVII. "Look in my face: my name is Might-have-been, And I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell." DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. The days following Barbara's return to Chancton Priory went slowly by, and she received no sign, no word from Berwick. She had felt quite sure that he would come--if not that same evening of her leaving Fletchings, then the next morning; if not in the morning, then in the afternoon. During those days she went through every phase of feeling. She learnt the lesson most human beings learn at some time of their lives--how to listen without appearing to do so for the sounds denoting arrival, how to hunger for the sound of a voice which to the listener brings happiness, however indifferently these same accents fall on the ears of others. She schooled herself not to flinch when the days went by bringing no successor to that letter in which Berwick had promised her so much more than she had ever asked of him. Even in the midst of her restless self-questioning and unhappiness, she was touched and pleased at the gladness with which she had been welcomed home again by Madame Sampiero, and even by Doctor McKirdy. It seemed strange that neither of them spoke of the man who now so wholly occupied her thoughts; no one, with the exception perhaps of his old nurse, noted Berwick's absence, or seemed to find it untoward. Barbara had at first been nervously afraid that Madame Sampiero would make some allusion to the few moments they had spent together that Sunday morning, that she would perhaps ask her what had induced her eager wish to leave Fletchings; but no such word was said, and Barbara could not even discover whether Doctor McKirdy was aware that her sudden return to the Priory had been entirely voluntary.