Her duty as a housekeeper took her to the blue room, which Mr. Hayes had chosen for their guest, a large apartment at the side of the house, not with the bleak northern aspect of the principal entrance, but looking away towards the village, and commanding a wide prospect of meadow land. The landscape in itself was not remarkable, but it had an attraction as of swiftly varying moods. Under a midsummer sky it would lie steeped in sunshine, and dappled with shadows of little, lightly-flying clouds, content and at peace. Seen through slant lines of grey rain it was beyond measure dreary and forlorn, burdening the gazer's soul with its flat and unrelieved heaviness. One would have said at such times that it was a veritable Land of Hopelessness. Then the clouds would part, mass themselves, perhaps, into strange islands and continents, and towering piles, and the sun would go down in wild splendours of flame as of a burning world, and the level meadows would become a marvellous plain, across which one might journey into the heart of unspeakable things. Then would follow the pensive sadness of the dusk, and the silvery enchantment of moonlight. And after all these changes there would probably come a grey and commonplace morning, in which it would appear as so many acres of very tolerable grazing land, in no wise remarkable or interesting. Barbara did not trouble herself much about the prospect. She was anxious to make sure that soap and towels had been put ready for Mr. Harding, and candles in the brass candlesticks on the chimney-piece, and ink and pens on the little old-fashioned writing-table. With a dainty instinct of grace she arranged the heavy hangings of the bed, and, seeing that a clumsy maid had left the pillow awry, she straightened and smoothed it with soft touches of a slender brown hand, as if she could sympathetically divine the sullen weariness of the head that should lie there. Then, fixing an absent gaze upon the carpet, she debated a perplexing question in her mind. Should she, or should she not, put some flowers in Mr. Harding's room? She wanted to make him feel that he was welcome to Mitchelhurst Place, and, to her shyness, it seemed easier to express that welcome in any silent way than to put it into words. And why not? She might have done it without thinking twice about it, but her uncle's little jests, and her own loneliness, while they left her fearless in questions of right and wrong, had made her uneasy about etiquette. As she leaned against one of the carved pillars of the great bed, musing, with lips compressed and anxious brow, she almost resolved that Mr. Reynold Harding should have nothing beyond what was a matter of housewifely duty. Why should she risk a blush or a doubt for him? But even with the half-formed resolution came the remembrance of his unlucky humiliation in her service, and Barbara started from her idle attitude, and went away, singing softly to herself.