"Don't sneer at me any more, or you will make me hateful!" cried Barbara. "I can't bear it! I will never ask you again if there is anything I can do--never! You needn't have shown me how you despised me: you might have been a little kinder when I went to you like that!" She swallowed down a sob. "Really I'm very sorry if anything I said--" he began. "Oh never mind now what you said or did! I know it, and that's enough. I won't give you another chance, but I won't quarrel. It hurts me, it's horrid, it's worse than Uncle Hayes. Do let us part friends--or--or--something like friends--not in this miserable way!" "With all my heart." She took her hand from the gate and turned towards him. "Say you forgive me then! For everything!" "Ah! that I can't do," Reynold replied, finding a kind of distorted pleasure in playing with her earnestness. "I'm not sure, yet, that there is anything to forgive." "Forgive me on the chance!" "Oh no, I couldn't presume to do that! It would be a chance whether _you_ forgave _me_ afterwards for my impertinence." A sudden blast nearly sent her tottering into his arms. She recovered herself, looked at him in speechless indignation as if he had ordered it, pushed open the gate, and the black tracery of bars swung back into its place, dividing them. Reynold stood where she had left him, gazing after her. She went a little way up the drive, and then lingered, half turning as if she thought some one had called. The ground on which she stood was dry and white in the moonshine, and dappled with fantastic, moving shadows. The little old trees fought against the wind, swaying their bare, misshapen arms above her head. The stone balls on either side of the entrance gleamed like skulls in the pale light, guarding the avenue to the sepulchral house, with its glassy rows of windows. For a moment the picture was as clear as day, with Barbara standing in the middle of the road; then a great wave of stormy cloud rolled up and overtopped the moon, and in the dusky confusion she vanished. CHAPTER IV. REYNOLD'S REGRET. With the passing of that gleam of moonlight it seemed to Reynold Harding that Mitchelhurst Place disappeared finally into the abyss that waits for all created things. Where the house, in its curious ghastly whiteness, had stood a moment earlier, was now nothing but baffling gloom, and the very gate vanished into the shadows, as if there were no need of any substantial barrier between him and the lost vision. The scene had closed with dramatic suddenness, and he felt that the play was played out, but how long he stood staring at the dusky curtain he did not know.