And with this they went off together to look at the seat in which he sat when Barbara saw him first, and then she stood in her old place in the Rothwells' red-lined pew, and looked across at him, recalling that summer Sunday. It would have been a delightful amusement if the church had been a few degrees warmer, but Barbara could not help shivering a little, and Adrian frankly avowed that he found it impossible to maintain his feelings at the proper pitch. "I'm blue," he said, "and I'm iced, and I can't be sentimental. And you wore a thin cream-coloured dress that day, which is terrible to think of. Might write something afterwards, perhaps," he continued, musingly. "Not while my feet are like two stones, but I feel as if I might thaw into a sonnet, or something of the kind." Barbara looked up at him reverentially, and Adrian began to laugh. "Let's go and eat those chops," he said. Later, as they walked along the street towards Mitchelhurst Place, Scarlett was silent for a time, glancing right and left at the dull cottages. Here and there one might catch a glimpse of firelight through the panes, but most of them were drearily blank, with grey windows and closed doors. It was too cold for the straw-plaiters to stand on their thresholds and gossip while they worked. There was a foreshadowing of snow in the low-hanging clouds. "What are you thinking of?" Barbara asked him. "Don't let us ever come here again!" he answered. "It's all very well for this once; we are young enough, we have our happiness before us. But never again! Suppose we were old and sad when we came back, or suppose----" He stopped short. "Suppose one came back alone," should have been the ending of that sentence. "Very well," she agreed hastily, as if to thrust aside the unspoken words. "We say our good-bye to Mitchelhurst to-day, then?" Adrian insisted. "Yes. There won't be any temptation to come again, if what they told us is true--will there?" She referred to a rumour which they had heard at the _Rothwell Arms_, that as Mr. Croft could not find a tenant for the Place he meant to pull it down. "No," said Scarlett. "It seems a shame, though," he added. Presently they came in sight of the entrance--black bars, and beyond them a stirring of black boughs in the January wind, over the straight, bleak roadway to the house. The young man pushed the gate. "Some one has been here to-day," he said, noting a curve already traced on the damp earth. "Some one to take the house, perhaps," Barbara suggested. "Look, there's a carriage waiting out to the right of the door. I wish they hadn't happened to choose this very day. I would rather have had the old Place to ourselves, wouldn't you?" "Much," said Adrian.