Then Berwick turned round: "I didn't answer your note because I thought I should almost certainly be seeing you to-day. Would you like to come over to Chillingworth this evening? Come to dinner, and we can have a talk afterwards----" But Boringdon answered quickly: "Thanks, I won't come to dinner, I'll turn up about nine." * * * * * And now Berwick sat waiting for Boringdon in the room where he had spent the rest of the night after his drive with Barbara from Halnakeham Castle. He was in that delightful state of mind which comes so rarely to thinking mortals,--when the thinker wishes to look neither backwards nor forwards. It was worth while to have gone through all he had gone through, to have won such weeks as had been his! Nay more, he was in the mood to tell himself that he would be content were life to go on as it was now for ever and a day, were his relations with Mrs. Rebell to remain as close, as tender--ay, even as platonic--as they had been during that strange period of her convalescence. With what emotion, with what sympathy she had described to him her interview with Lord Bosworth; there had been such complete comprehension of his attitude, such keen distress that Madame Sampiero had repulsed him! But, deep in Berwick's heart, something told him that Barbara's attitude to him and to their joint future was changing, and that she was in very truth on the eve of surrender. Nature, so he assured himself to-night had triumphed over convention, and, as a still voice also whispered, proved stronger than conscience. Berwick's own conscience was not ill at ease, but he experienced many phases of feeling, and went through many moods. Lately he had asked himself boldly whether there was any real reason why he and Barbara should not repeat, in happier fashion, the example set them by the two beings for whom they both had so sincere and--yes, it might be said, reverent--an affection? Those two, Lord Bosworth and Madame Sampiero, had shown that it was possible to be grandly faithful to a tie unsanctioned by law, unsanctified by religious faith. Already Berwick's love for Barbara had purified and elevated his nature; surely together they might use his vast fortune to better purpose than he had done alone, for he had long ago discovered how tender, how charitable were all her impulses. Then, again, he would acknowledge to himself, with something like impatient amazement, that he loved Barbara too well, too intimately, to ask her to do violence to her sensitive, rather scrupulous conscience. She could scarcely be more his own than he felt her to be now.