"No, thank you." He smiled as he thrust the bills he held down among the dusty bundles in the drawer, and brushed his finger tips fastidiously. "Souvenirs ought to be characteristic. A receipted bill would be a very respectable souvenir, but I'm afraid it would convey a false impression of the Rothwells." She looked away, a little perplexed and dissatisfied. It seemed to her that the future master of Mitchelhurst should not talk in that fashion of his own people, and she did not understand that the slight bitterness of speech was merely the outcome of a life of discontent. He hardly knew how to speak otherwise. "I suppose they would have paid everybody if they hadn't had misfortunes," she said. "No doubt. We would most of us pay our bills if we had nothing else to do with the money." "Well," Barbara declared with a blush, "the next Rothwell will pay _his_ bills, I know." "We'll hope so." His smile apparently emboldened her, for she looked up at him. "Mr. Harding," she began. "Well?" She put her hand to her mouth with an irresolute gesture, softly touching her red lips. "Oh--nothing!" she said. "Nothing?" he questioned. But at that moment there was a call. "Barbara! Barbara! are you stopping to _write_ those books?" She turned swiftly, caught them up and was gone, sending an answering cry of "Coming, uncle--coming!" before her. Reynold lingered a little before he followed her, to wonder what that something was that was nothing. When he went in he found Mr. Hayes and Barbara both industriously occupied with their reading, after the fashion of a quiet Sunday in the country. He took up the first volume that came to hand, threw himself into a chair, and remained for a considerable time frowning and musing over the unread page. Mr. Hayes turned his pages with wearisome regularity, but after a while Barbara laid her _Good Words_ on her lap and gazed fixedly at the window, where little could be seen but the reflection of the lamp in the outer darkness. The silence of the room seeming to have become accustomed to this change of attitude, the slightest possible movement of her head brought Reynold within range. He moved, and she was looking at the window, from which she turned quite naturally, and met his glance. Her fingers were playing restlessly with her little gold cross, and Harding said, "Your talisman!" No word had been spoken for so long that the brief utterance came with a kind of startling distinctness. "My talisman still, thanks to you," Barbara replied. The absurdity of his misfortune was a little forgotten, and the fact of his service remained, so Harding almost smiled as he rejoined-- "I say 'thanks to it' for my introduction." Mr. Hayes knitted his brows, and looked from one to the other with bright, bead-like eyes. When, a minute later, a maid came to the door, and asked to speak to Miss Strange, he waited till his niece was gone, and then sharply demanded-- "What was that about a talisman?"