In a little dark room behind the hall the Committee were already
assembled, and they went at once on to the platform.
CHAPTER II
Unmoved by the stares of the audience, Barbara sat absorbed in moody
thoughts.
Into the three weeks since Miltoun's election there had been crowded
such a multitude of functions that she had found, as it were, no time,
no energy to know where she stood with herself. Since that morning in
the stable, when he had watched her with the horse Hal, Harbinger had
seemed to live only to be close to her. And the consciousness of his
passion gave her a tingling sense of pleasure. She had been riding and
dancing with him, and sometimes this had been almost blissful. But there
were times too, when she felt--though always with a certain contempt of
herself, as when she sat on that sunwarmed stone below the tor--a queer
dissatisfaction, a longing for something outside a world where she
had to invent her own starvations and simplicities, to make-believe in
earnestness.
She had seen Courtier three times. Once he had come to dine, in response
to an invitation from Lady Valleys worded in that charming, almost
wistful style, which she had taught herself to use to those below her
in social rank, especially if they were intelligent; once to the Valleys
House garden party; and next day, having told him what time she would be
riding, she had found him in the Row, not mounted, but standing by the
rail just where she must pass, with that look on his face of mingled
deference and ironic self-containment, of which he was a master.
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