Madame Sampiero, during the long hour just before the dawn, had debated keenly within herself as to whether it would be well for Barbara to go to Fletchings. Certainly, yes, if the so doing would add to her happiness or consolidate her position, but then Arabella Berwick must be won over and propitiated, made to understand that Mrs. Rebell was destined to become a person of importance. What Arabella should be brought to think rested with James Berwick. For the first time for years, Madame Sampiero would have given much to be downstairs, to-night, to see what was going on in the great Blue drawing-room which lay just below her own room. CHAPTER V. "So every sweet with sour is tempered still, That maketh it be coveted the more; For easy things that may be got at will Most sorts of men do set but little store." SPENSER. Berwick walked up and down the hall waiting for Mrs. Rebell. Not only Mrs. Turke's ambiguous utterances, but his own knowledge of her parents, made him look forward with a certain curiosity to seeing her. The story of Richard Rebell, the one-time brilliant and popular man about town, who, not long after his marriage to a reigning beauty, had been overwhelmed by the shameful accusation of cheating at cards; the subsequent libel case which had developed into a mid-Victorian _cause célèbre_; the award of nominal damages; and Mr. and Mrs. Richard Rebell's ultimate retreat, for ever, to the Continent--it was all well known to James Berwick. Still, he would rather have met this Mrs. Rebell anywhere else than at Chancton Priory. Her presence here could not but destroy, for himself, the peculiar charm of the place. How unpunctual she was! Why was it that women--with the one exception of his sister Arabella--were always either too early or too late? McGregor's voice broke across the ungallant thought, "Mrs. Rebell, sir, is in the Blue drawing-room. She has been down some time." The words gave Berwick a disagreeable shock. The Blue drawing-room? Years had gone by since the two charming rooms taking up the whole west side of the Priory had been in familiar use. He remembered very well the last time he had seen them filled with a feminine presence. It had been just after his first term at Oxford, when he still felt something of the schoolboy: Madame Sampiero, beautiful and gracious as she only knew how to be, had received him with great kindness, striving to put him completely at his ease. There had been there also his uncle, Lord Bosworth, and a certain Septimus Daman, an old friend and habitué of the Priory in those later days of Lord Bosworth and Madame Sampiero's intimacy, when no woman ever crossed its stately threshold.