For some weeks they saw less of each other. Unconsciously, since Alice’s revelation, Barbara had grown a little shy of Richard. It came mainly from her truthfulness. Without altogether defining her feelings to herself, Barbara regarded it as unfair to Richard, as indeed taking advantage of him, to seek his company, knowing more about him than she seemed to know. She felt even deceitful in appearing to know of him only what he chose to tell her. She not only knew more than she seemed to know, but she knew more than Richard himself knew! At the same time she felt that she had no right to tell him anything. If the conjecture were untrue, what harm would it do both to him and his parents! Supposing it true, if those who had cherished him all his life did not tell him, could it be right for her, coming by accident upon it, to tell him?

Therefore she did not now go to Mortgrange so often. Every day she went out for her gallop—alone and unattended, for she was so accustomed to the freedom of hundreds of leagues of wild country that the idea of a groom tagging along behind her was hateful. Lady Ann and she were now on the same footing as before their misunderstanding—if indeed their whole relation was anything better than a misunderstanding. What lady Ann knew of Barbara she misunderstood, and what she did not know of Barbara was the best of her, while what Barbara did not know of lady Ann was the worst of her. But Barbara had told lady Ann that she was sorry she had spoken as she had, and lady Ann had received the statement as the expected apology.

Lady Ann’s relations with Barbara were therefore not so much restored as unchanged. The elder lady neither sought nor avoided the younger, gave her always the same cold welcome and farewell, yet was as much pleased to see her as to see anybody. She regarded her as the merest of butterflies, with pretty flutter and no stay.

When Barbara went into the library, she greeted Richard as if she had just seen him the day before, asking what piece of work he was at now, and showing an interest in it as genuine as her interest in himself. If there was anything in it she did not quite understand, she made him explain it. But Richard continued to give her even more important aid in things literary, advising her what to read and what to think about as she read a certain book. He laid before her certain poems, from which he instructed her to choose those she liked best to copy out in her own hand in a manuscript book, hoping to cause them to grow in her mind until they began to assume something of the shape they had had in the author’s.