‘You must not remain up longer than you can bear,’ she said. She took a seat on a stool, and leaned her head on her hand, her elbow resting on her knee. ‘Papa, whilst I have been waiting in the hall, I have turned the whole matter over and over in my mind. Papa, I suppose that Eve’s mother was very, very beautiful?’ He sighed in the dark and put his hands together. The pale twilight through the window shone on them; they were white and ghost-like. ‘Papa dear, I suppose that you saw her when she was ill every day, and got to love her. I dare say you struggled against the feeling, but your heart was too strong for your head and carried your resolutions away, just as I have seen a flood on the Tamar against the dam at Abbotswear; it has burst through all obstructions, and in a moment every trace of the dam has disappeared. You were under the same roof with her. Then there came a great ache here’—she touched her heart—’allowing you no rest. Well, dear papa, I think it must have been so with Mr. Babb, he saw our dear sweet Eve daily, and love for her swelled in his heart; he formed the strongest resolutions, and platted them with the toughest considerations, and stamped and wedged them in with vigorous effort, but all was of no avail—the flood rose and burst over it and carried all away.’ Mr. Jordan was touched by the allusion to his dead or lost wife, but not in the manner Barbara intended. ‘I have heard,’ continued Barbara, ‘that Eve’s mother was brought to this house very ill, and that you cared for her till she was recovered. Was it in this room? Was it in this bed?’ She heard a low moan, and saw the white hands raised in deprecation, or in prayer. ‘Then you sat here and watched her; and when she was in fever you suffered; when her breath came so faint that you thought she was dying, your very soul stood on tiptoe, agonised. When her eyes opened with reason in them, your heart leaped. When she slept, you sat here with your eyes on her face and could not withdraw them. Perhaps you took her hand in the night, when she was vexed with horrible dreams, and the pulse of your heart sent its waves against her hot, tossing, troubled heart, and little by little cooled that fire, and brought peace to that unrest. Papa, I dare say that somehow thus it came about that Eve got interested in Mr. Jasper and grew to love him. I often let her take my place when he was ill. You must excuse dearest Eve. It was my fault. I should have been more cautious. But I thought nothing of it then. I knew nothing of how love is sown, and throws up its leaves, and spreads and fills the whole heart with a tangle of roots.’ In this last half hour Barbara had drawn nearer to her father than in all her previous life. For once she had entered into his thoughts, roused old recollections, both sweet and bitter—inexpressibly sweet, unutterably bitter—and his heart was full of tears. ‘Was Eve’s mother as beautiful as our darling?’