She looked a little older than when Adrian had bidden her his mute farewell at Mitchelhurst. The expression of her face was at once quickened and deepened, her horizon was enlarged, though the gaze which questioned it was as innocent as ever. But her dark eyes kept a memory of the proud patience with which she had waited through the winter. There had been times when her faith in the _Clergy List_ had been shaken, and she had doubted whether Adrian would ever consult its pages, and find out where her father lived. She did not blame him; he was free as air; yet those had been moments of almost unbearable loneliness. She never spoke of him to anybody; to have been joked and pitied by Louisa and Hetty would have been hateful to her. She thought of him continually, and dreamed of him sometimes. But there was only a limited satisfaction in dreaming of Adrian Scarlett; he was apt to be placed in absurdly topsy-turvy circumstances, and to behave unaccountably. Barbara felt, regretfully, that a girl who was parted from such a lover should have dreamed in a loftier manner. She was ashamed of herself, although she knew she could not help it. Now, however, there was no need to trouble herself about dreams or clergy lists; Adrian was leaning on the gate by her side. "What you must have thought of me!" he was saying. "Never to take the least notice of your uncle's death! I can't think how I missed hearing of it." "It was in the _Times_ and some of the other papers," said Barbara. The melancholy little announcement had seemed to her a sort of appeal to her absent lover. "I never saw it. I was--busy just then," he explained with a little hesitation. "I suppose I didn't look at the papers. I have been fancying you at Mitchelhurst all the time, and promising myself that I would go back there, and find you where I found you first." Barbara did not speak; she leaned back and looked up at him with a smile. Adrian's answering gaze held hers as if it enfolded it. "I _might_ have written," he said, "or inquired--I might have done _something_, at any rate! I can't think how it was I didn't! But I'd got it into my head that I wanted to get those poems of mine out--wanted to go back to you with my volume in my hand, and show you the dedication. I was waiting for that--I never thought----" "Yes," said the girl with breathless admiration and approval. "And are they finished now?" "Confound the poems!" cried Adrian with an amazed, remorseful laugh. A stronger word had been on his lips. "Don't talk of them, Barbara! To think that I neglected you while I was polishing those idiotic rhymes, and that you think it was all right and proper! Oh, my dear, if you tried for a week you couldn't make me feel smaller! If--if anything had happened to you, and I had been left with my trumpery verses--" "You shall not call them that! Don't talk so!"