back. I dare say, now, it would do him good to have his Bible. I’ll give you that to take to him. He may read and come to repentance.’
‘It is possible that there may be other things of his he will want. If you can make them up into a bundle, I will send for them. No,’ she said after a pause, ‘I will not send for them. I will take them myself.’
‘You will not mind staying there whilst I fetch them?’ said Mr. Babb. ‘Of course you won’t. You have the horse to hold. If you like to take a look round the garden you may, but there is nothing to see. Visit the mill if you like. You can give twopence to a boy to hold the horse.’ Then he slipped in again and relocked the door.
Barbara was only detained ten minutes. Mr. Babb came back with a jumble of clothes, a Bible, and a violin, not tied together, but in his arms anyhow. He threw everything on the doorstep.
‘There,’ he said, ‘I will hold the bridle, whilst you make this into a bundle. I’m not natty with my fingers.’ He took the horse from her. Barbara knelt under the portico and folded Jasper’s clothes, and tied all together in an old table cover the father gave for the purpose. ‘Take the fiddle,’ he said, ‘or I’ll smash it.’
She looked up at him gravely, whilst knotting the ends.
‘Have you a message for your son—of love and forgiveness?’
‘Forgiveness! it is your father he has robbed. Love——There is no love lost between us.’
‘He is lonely and sad,’ said Barbara, not now looking up, but busy with her hands, tightening the knots and intent on the bundle. ‘I can see that his heart is aching; night and day there is a gnawing pain in his breast. No one loves him, and he seems to me to be a man who craves for love, who might be reclaimed by love.’
‘Don’t forget the letter for your father,’ said Mr. Babb.
‘What about your son? Have you no message for him?’
‘None. Mind that envelope. What it contains is precious.’
‘Is it a cheque for fifteen hundred pounds?’
‘Oh, dear me, no! It is a text of scripture.’
Then, hastily, Mr. Babb stepped back, shut the door, and bolted and chained it.
CHAPTER XIV.
A SINE QUÂ NON.
Barbara was on her way home from Ashburton. She had attended her aunt’s funeral, and knew that a little sum of about fifty pounds per annum was hers, left her by her aunt. She was occupied with her thoughts. Was there any justification for Jasper? The father was hateful. She could excuse his leaving home; that was nothing; such a home must be intolerable to a young man of spirit—but to rob his father was another matter. Barbara could not quite riddle the puzzle out in her mind. It was clear that Mr. Babb had confided the fifteen hundred pounds to Jasper, and that Jasper had made away with them. He had been taken and sent to prison at Prince’s Town. Thence he had escaped, and whilst escaping had met with the accident which had brought him to become an inmate of Morwell House. Jasper’s story that he had lost the money was false. He had himself taken it. Barbara could not quite make it out; she tried to put it from her. What mattered it how the robbery had been committed?—sufficient that the man who took the money was with her father. What had he done with the money? That no one but himself could tell, and that she would not ask him.
It was vain crying over spilt milk. Fifteen hundred pounds were gone, and the loss of that money might affect Eve’s prospects. Eve was already attracting admiration, but who would take her for her beauty alone? Eve, Barbara said to herself, was a jewel that must be kept in a velvet and morocco case, and must not be put to rough usage. She must have money. She must marry where nothing would be required of her but to look and be—charming.
It was clear to Barbara that Mr. Coyshe was struck with her sister, and Mr. Coyshe was a promising, pushing man, sure to make his way. If a man has a high opinion of himself he impresses others with belief in him. Mr. Jordan was loud in his praises; Barbara had sufficient sense to dislike his boasting, but she was influenced by it. Though his manner was not to her taste, she was convinced that Mr. Coyshe was a genius, and a man whose name would be known through England.
What was to be done? The only thing she could think of was to insist on her father making over Morwell to Eve on his death; as for herself—she had her fifty pounds, and she could go as housekeeper to some lady; the Duchess of Bedford would recommend her. She was was not likely to be thought of by any man with only fifty pounds, and with a plain face.
When Barbara reached this point she laughed, and then she sighed. She laughed because the idea of her being married was so absurd. She sighed because she was tired. Just then, quite uncalled for and unexpected, the form of Jasper Babb rose up before her mind’s eye, as she had last seen him, pale, looking after her, waving his hat.
She was returning to him without a word from his father, of forgiveness, of encouragement, of love. She was scheming a future for herself and for Eve; Jasper had no future, only a horrible past, which cast its shadow forward, and took all hope out of the present, and blighted the future. If she could but have brought him a kind message it would have inspired him to redeem his great fault, to persevere in well-doing. She knew that she would find him watching for her return with a wistful look in his dark full eyes, asking her if she brought him consolation.
Then she reproached herself because she had left his parting farewell unacknowledged. She had been ungracious; no doubt she had hurt his feelings.
She had passed through Tavistock, with her groom riding some way behind her, when she heard the sound of a trotting horse, and almost immediately a well-known voice called, ‘Glad to see your face turned homewards, Miss Jordan.’
‘Good evening, Mr. Coyshe.’
‘Our roads run together, to my advantage. What is that you are carrying? Can I relieve you?’
‘A violin. The boy is careless, he might let it fall. Besides he is burdened with my valise and a bundle.’
‘What? has your aunt bequeathed a violin to you?’
A little colour came into Barbara’s cheeks, and she answered, ‘I am bringing it home from over the moor.’ She blushed to have to equivocate.
‘I hope you have had something more substantial left you than an old fiddle,’ said the surgeon.
‘Thank you, my poor aunt has been good enough to leave me something comfortable, which will enable my dear father to make up to Eve for the sum that has been lost.’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Mr. Coyshe. ‘Charmed!’
‘By the way,’ Barbara began, ‘I wanted to say something to you, but I have not had the opportunity. You were quite in the wrong about the saucer of sour milk, though I admit there was a stocking—but how you saw that, passes my comprehension.’
‘I did not see it, I divined it,’ said the young man, with his protruding light eyes staring at her with an odd mischievous expression in them. ‘It is part of the mysteries of medicine—a faculty
