‘I have something to show you,’ Downe resumed, producing from a drawer a sheet of paper on which was an elaborate design for a canopied tomb.  ’This has been sent me by the architect, but it is not exactly what I want.’

’You have got Jones to do it, I see, the man who is carrying out my house,’ said Barnet, as he glanced at the signature to the drawing.

’Yes, but it is not quite what I want.  I want something more striking—­more like a tomb I have seen in St. Paul’s Cathedral.  Nothing less will do justice to my feelings, and how far short of them that will fall!’

Barnet privately thought the design a sufficiently imposing one as it stood, even extravagantly ornate; but, feeling that he had no right to criticize, he said gently, ’Downe, should you not live more in your children’s lives at the present time, and soften the sharpness of regret for your own past by thinking of their future?’

‘Yes, yes; but what can I do more?’ asked Downe, wrinkling his forehead hopelessly.

It was with anxious slowness that Barnet produced his reply—­the secret object of his visit to-night.  ’Did you not say one day that you ought by rights to get a governess for the children?’

Downe admitted that he had said so, but that he could not see his way to it.  ‘The kind of woman I should like to have,’ he said, ’would be rather beyond my means.  No; I think I shall send them to school in the town when they are old enough to go out alone.’

’Now, I know of something better than that.  The late Lieutenant Savile’s daughter, Lucy, wants to do something for herself in the way of teaching.  She would be inexpensive, and would answer your purpose as well as anybody for six or twelve months.  She would probably come daily if you were to ask her, and so your housekeeping arrangements would not be much affected.’

‘I thought she had gone away,’ said the solicitor, musing.  ’Where does she live?’

Barnet told him, and added that, if Downe should think of her as suitable, he would do well to call as soon as possible, or she might be on the wing.  ‘If you do see her,’ he said, ’it would be advisable not to mention my name.  She is rather stiff in her ideas of me, and it might prejudice her against a course if she knew that I recommended it.’

Downe promised to give the subject his consideration, and nothing more was said about it just then.  But when Barnet rose to go, which was not till nearly bedtime, he reminded Downe of the suggestion and went up the street to his own solitary home with a sense of satisfaction at his promising diplomacy in a charitable cause.

CHAPTER VII