Just before the little party of four, the three men and their hostess, had gone in to dinner, a radiant apparition had danced into the room, little fair-haired Julia, the incarnation of happy childhood. Her mother had placed her, laughing, beside the rather fantastic portrait which was then being painted of the child by an Italian artist, and which now hung in Lord Bosworth's study at Fletchings, bearing silent witness to many past events. With the memory of this scene singularly vivid, it shocked Berwick that now, even after the lapse of so many years, another woman should be installed as mistress of the room towards which he was bending his steps. So feeling, he hesitated, and waited for a moment, a frown on his face, before turning the handle of the door. * * * * * James Berwick cultivated in himself a sense of the unusual and the picturesque; especially was he ever consciously seeking to find these qualities in those women with whom chance brought him into temporary contact. As he passed through into the Blue drawing-room, he became at once aware that the former ordered beauty of the apartment had been restored, and that the tall white figure standing by the fire harmonised, in some subtle fashion, with the old French furniture covered in the rather bright blue silk which gave its name to the room. Barbara Rebell was gazing down into the wood fire, one slender hand and arm resting on the rose marble mantel-piece. She looked singularly young and forlorn, and yet, as she turned towards him, he saw that her whole bearing was instinct with a rather desperate dignity. She was not at all what the man advancing towards her had thought to find--above all she now looked curiously unlike the clear-eyed vigorous creature she had appeared when walking by McKirdy's side along the open down. As James Berwick came into the circle of light thrown by the tall shaded lamps, she turned and directly faced him,--the expression of her face that of a shrinking and proud embarrassment. Then she spoke, the words she uttered bringing to her hearer discomfiture and rather piqued surprise. "I have been wishing so much to see you, Mr. Boringdon, and also your mother. I think your sister must have written and told you of her kindness to me--though indeed I do not suppose for a moment she can have made you understand how very very good she and Mr. Johnstone both were. I am the bearer of several things from Grace. Also"--her low grave voice faltered--"I wish to ask if you will be so kind as to arrange for the sending back to your brother-in-law of some money he lent me." She held out as she spoke an envelope, "It is fifty pounds, and I do not know how to convey it to him." Berwick felt keenly annoyed,--there is always something lowering to one's self-esteem in being taken for another person, and especially in receiving in that character anything savouring of a confidential communication.