"But is it too late? Can't anything be done?" He almost smiled at the feminine failure to realise that the night's work was more than a tiff which might be made up and forgotten. "Kiss and make friends--eh?" he said. "Will you run and fetch your uncle?" The leaden little jest was uttered so miserably that Barbara only sighed in answer. "No," said the young man, "it's all over. Even if I could apologise--and I can't--I couldn't sit at his table again. It wouldn't be possible. No, I must go!" "And you are sorry you ever came!" "Don't remind me of that! I'm just as sorry I came here as that I ever came into the world at all." The old clock in the dusky hall below struck ten slow strokes. "This will be good-night and good-bye," said Harding. "I shall be gone before you are down in the morning." Even as he spoke he was thinking how completely his bitter folly had exiled him from her presence. "You are going home?" "Home? Well, yes, I suppose so. By the way, I don't know that I shall go home to-morrow. I may have to stay another day in Mitchelhurst. That depends--I shall see when the morning comes. Your uncle's jurisdiction doesn't extend beyond the grounds of the Place, I suppose. I won't trespass, he may be very sure of that, and I won't stay in the neighbourhood any longer than I can help. Only, you see, this is rather a sudden change of plans." "I am so sorry," the girl repeated. "I hate to think of your going away like this. I'm ashamed!" "No! no! I'm rightly served, though you needn't tell Mr. Hayes I said so. I was fool enough to let my temper get the upper hand, and I must pay the penalty. How I _could_ be such an inconceivable idiot--but that's neither here nor there. It was my own fault, and the less said about it the better." Barbara shook her head. "No, it was my fault." This time Harding really smiled, drearily enough, but still it was a smile. "Yours?" he said. "That never occurred to me. How do you make it out?" "Well," she said, looking down, and tracing a joint of the stone with the tip of her little embroidered slipper, "it was partly my fault, anyhow." This "partly" seemed to point to something definite. "How do you mean?" he asked, looking curiously at her. "I knew he was cross," she said. "I knew it this morning as soon as he came down, and he generally gets worse and worse all day. He isn't often out of temper like that--only now and then. I dare say he will be all right to-morrow, or perhaps the day after." "That's a little late for me!" said Harding. "So you see it _was_ my fault. I ought to have told you." "Well, perhaps if you had, I might have been a trifle more on my guard. I don't know, I'm sure. Yes, I wish you had happened to warn me! But you mustn't reproach yourself, Miss Strange, it wasn't your fault. You didn't know what I was, you couldn't be expected to think of it." "But I _did_ think of it!" Barbara cried remorsefully. "You did?"