To Arthur Lestrange, who had been for some time falling in love with Barbara despite the unlikeness between them, these interviews, which he never hesitated to interrupt, were hardly agreeable. He did not relish the thought that she looked to the workman rather than the employer for help in her studies. Nor was it consolation to him to be aware that he could no more give her what the workman gave her than he could teach her his bookbinding.

At Wylder Hall no questions were ever asked as to how she had spent the day. Now that her twin was gone, her mother loved her best in the world, although she never troubled her head about what she did with herself. She thought Arthur Lestrange would make a good enough husband for Bab and, having chanced upon the discovery that her husband cherished hopes of a loftier alliance, grew rather favourable to a match between them.

There was, however, a little betterment in Mrs. Wylder, and ceasing to go to church was only one of the indications of it. She had in her a foundation of genuine simplicity, and was in essence a generous soul. The source of the strange wild charm and honest strength of the daughter lay buried beneath the ruin of earthquake and tornado in the soul of the mother. The best of changes is slow in most natures—the main question is, perhaps, whether the slowness is because of feebleness, or because of the root-nature and the magnitude of what has been initiated.

Since returning to a more civilized life, Mr. Wylder had grown self-absorbed and morose. One cause of the change was that the remaining twin, his favourite, had for some time shown signs of a failing constitution. His increasing feebleness weighed heavily on his father. He had had a tutor ever since they came to England, but now they did little or no work together, spending their hours mostly in wandering about the grounds, and in fitful reading of books of any sort in which the boy could be led to take a passing interest. Barbara’s heart yearned for the boy, but he was greatly attached to his nurse, and did not care for Barbara. The mother did not heed him, and the father, for very misery, could scarcely look at him. He was to him like one dead already, only not dead enough to be buried.