"I came with my mother to see uncle a great many years ago, but I only came to live here last October. Uncle wanted somebody. He said it was dull." "I should think it was. Isn't it dull for you?" "Sometimes," said Barbara. "It isn't at all like home. That's a little house with a great many people in it--father and mother, and all my brothers and sisters, and father's pupils. And this is a big house with nobody in it." "Till you came," said Reynold, hesitating over the little bow or glance which should have pointed his words. "Well, there's uncle," said Barbara with a smile, "he must count for somebody. But _I_ feel exactly like nobody when I am going in and out of all those empty rooms. You must see them to-morrow." The clock on the chimney-piece struck, and she turned her head to look at it. "_That's_ five minutes slow," she said. "And the other was more than ten minutes fast." "Yes, it gains. Do you know," said Barbara, "I always feel as if the great clock were _the_ time, so when it fairly runs away into the future and I have to stop it, to let the world come up with it again, it seems to me almost as if I stopped my own life too." "Some people would be uncommonly glad to do that," said Harding; "or even to make time go backward for a while." "Well, I don't mind for a quarter of an hour. But I don't want it to go back, really. Not back to pinafores and the schoolroom," said Barbara with a laugh, which in some curious fashion turned to a deepening flush. The swift, impulsive blood was always coming and going at a thought, a fancy, a mere nothing. Harding smiled in his grim way. "I suppose it's just as well _not_ to want time to run back," he said at last. "Uncle might find himself punctual for once if it did. Oh, here he comes!" The door opened as she spoke, and Mr. Hayes appeared on the threshold with an inquiring face. "Ah! you are down, Barbara! That's right. Dinner's ready, they tell me." Reynold looked at Barbara, hesitated, and then offered his arm. Mr. Hayes stood back and eyed them as they passed--the tall young man, pale, dark-browed, scowling a little, and the girl at his side radiantly conscious of her dignity. Even when they had gone by he was obliged to wait a moment. The sweeping folds of Barbara's dress demanded space and respect. His glance ran up them to her shoulders, to the amber beads about her neck, to the loose coils of her dusky hair, and he followed meekly with a whimsical smile. They dined in the great dining-room, where a score of guests would have seemed few. But they had a little table, with four candles on it, set near a clear fire, and shut in by an overshadowing screen. "We are driven out of this in the depth of winter," said Mr. Hayes. "It is too cold--nothing seems to warm it, and it is such a terrible journey from the drawing-room fire. But till the bitter weather comes I like it, and I always come back as soon as the spring begins. We were here by March, weren't we, Barbara?"