"It is not that," she spoke with difficulty, hardly knowing why she felt so torn by conflicting feelings of shame and pain. Perhaps it was only because the evocation of St. Germains brought the presence of her mother before her. She tried to tell herself that she had known that this would--nay, must--happen. The battle had been fought and lost before to-night. During the long solitary days Barbara had just lived through, she had acknowledged that she could not give up Berwick,--rather than that they must inevitably come to do what Lord Bosworth and Madame Sampiero had done. And yet this discussion, the unfolding of this plan, filled her with humiliation and misery. "When I come back," she said, looking at him, for the first time straight in the eyes, "I shall have to tell my god-mother--and--and Doctor McKirdy the truth." "You will do what you wish. We shall both do exactly what you think right, my dearest!" Berwick could hardly believe in his own amazing good fortune, and yet he also felt ill at ease. "Barbara," he said suddenly, "before I go--and I ought to be going now, for I shall cross to France to-morrow--I want to tell you something----" "Something else?" there was a tone of appeal in her voice. "Yes, it will not take long. Perhaps I ought to have begun by doing so. Some time ago Oliver Boringdon made me a curious confidence. He told me that, were you ever free to marry, he meant to make you an offer, and if you refused,--he was good enough to intimate that he thought this quite possible,--to go on doing so at intervals unless you became the wife of another man!" Barbara looked at him, and then began to laugh helplessly, though the words had jarred on her horribly. "Oliver Boringdon? You can't have understood; how dared he say such a thing--about me?" and the tears ran down her cheeks. "Nay, he was right, perhaps, to say what he did. In any case I am sure you ought to know--it was my duty to tell you." "But why?" cried Barbara. "Why?" "A sop," he said with sudden sharpness, "to my own conscience." But conscience proved an unappeased, upbraiding companion during James Berwick's four-mile walk to Halnakeham station. CHAPTER XXI. "They have most power to hurt us whom we love; We lay our sleeping lives within their arms." BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. A short avenue of chestnut trees, now in their scented glory of rose-pink blossom, hid the square red-brick hunting lodge, still known by its pre-Revolution name of Le Pavillon du Dauphin, from the broad solitary roadway skirting the Forest of St. Germains. Under this avenue James Berwick, his hands clasped behind him, his eyes bent on the ground, was walking up and down the morning of the day he was expecting Barbara to join him.