lying on his forehead; and there was my lady herself, kneeling down and looking at him, he with his arm thrown round her to hold her there. Now I just ask you, Barbara, whether there's any sense in fadding with a man like that? If ever he did have the headache before he was married, I used to mix him up a good dose of salts and senna, and tell him to go to bed early and sleep the pain off."

Barbara made no reply: but she turned her face from Miss Carlyle. They came upon the gardener, and Miss Carlyle got into a discussion with him, a somewhat warm one; she insisting upon having certain work done in a certain way; he standing to it that Mr. Carlyle had ordered it done in another. Barbara grew tired, and returned to the house.

They were then in the adjoining room, at the piano, and Barbara had an opportunity of hearing that sweet voice. She did as Miss Carlyle confessed to have done, pushed open the door between the two rooms, and looked in. It was the twilight hour, almost too dusk to see; but she could distinguish Isabel seated at the piano, and Mr. Carlyle standing behind her. She was singing one of the ballads from the opera of the "Bohemian Girl," "When other lips."

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Why do you like that song so much, Archibald ?" she asked, when she had finished it.

"I don't know. I never liked it so much until I heard it from you." "I wonder if they are come in. Shall we go into the next room?” "Just this one first, this translation from the German, "Twere vain to tell thee all I feel.' There's real music in that song."

"Yes, there is. Do you know, Archibald, your taste is just like papa's. He liked all these quiet, imaginative songs, and so do you. And so do I," she laughingly added, "if I must speak the truth. Mrs. Vane used to stop her ears and make a face, when papa made me sing them. Papa returned the compliment, though; for he would walk out of the room if she began her loud Italian songs. I speak of the time when she was with us in London."

She ceased, and began the song, singing it exquisitely, in a low, sweet, earnest tone, the chords of the accompaniment, at its conclusion, dying off gradually into silence.

"There, Archibald! I am sure I have sung you ten songs at least," she said, leaning her head back against him and looking at him from her upturned face. "You ought to pay me."

He did pay her: holding the dear face to him, and taking from it some impassioned kisses. Barbara turned to the window, a low moan of pain escaping her, as she pressed her forehead on one of its panes, and looked forth at the dusky night. Isabel came in on her husband's arm. 66 Are you here alone, Miss Hare? I really beg your pardon. posed you were with Miss Carlyle." "Where is Cornelia, Barbara ?"

"I have but just come in," was Barbara's reply. following me."

"I dare

I sup

say she is

So she was, for she came upon them as they were speaking, her voice raised to tones of anger.

"Archibald, what have you been telling Blair about that geranium bed? He says you have been ordering him to make it oval. We decided that it should be square."

"Isabel would prefer it oval," was his reply.

"But it will be best square," repeated Miss Carlyle.

"It is all right, Cornelia: Blair has his orders. I wish it to be oval." "He is a regular muff, is that Blair, and as obstinate as a mule,” cried Miss Carlyle.

"Indeed then, Cornelia, I think him a very civil, good servant."

"Oh, of course," snapped Miss Carlyle. "You never can see faults in anybody. You always were a simpleton in some things, Archibald." Mr. Carlyle laughed good humouredly: he was of an even, calm temper and he had, all his life, been subjected to the left-handed compliments of his sister. Isabel resented these speeches in her heart: she was growing more attached to her husband day by day. "It is well everybody does not think so," cried he, with a glance at his wife and Barbara, as they drew round the tea-table.

The evening went on to ten, and as the timepiece struck the hour, Barbara rose from her chair in amazement. "I did not think it was so

late. Surely some one must have come for me."

"I will inquire," was Lady Isabel's answer: and Mr. Carlyle touched the bell. No one had come for Miss Hare. "Mamma may

"Then I fear I must trouble Peter," cried Barbara.

be gone to rest, tired, and papa must have forgotten me. It would never do for me to get locked out," she gaily added.

"Like you were one night before," said Mr. Carlyle, significantly.

He alluded to the night when Barbara was in the grove of trees with her unfortunate brother, and Mr. Hare was on the point, unconsciously, of locking her out. She had given Mr. Carlyle the history: but its recollection now called up a smart pain, and a change passed over her face.

"Oh! don't, Archibald!" she uttered, in the impulse of the moment: "don't recal it." Isabel wondered.

"Can Peter take me?" continued Barbara.

"I had better take you," said Mr. Carlyle. "It is late."

Barbara's heart beat at the words; it beat as she put her things on; as she said good night to Lady Isabel and Miss Carlyle; it beat to throbbing as she went out with him and took his arm. All just as it used to be-only that he was now the husband of another. Only!

It was a warm lovely June night, not moonlight, but bright with its summer's twilight. They went down the park into the road, which they crossed, and soon came to a stile. From that stile there led a path through the fields which would pass the back of Justice Hare's. Barbara stopped at it.

"Would you choose the field way to-night, Barbara? The grass will be damp. And this is the longest way."

"But we shall escape the dust of the road."

"Oh! very well, if you prefer it. It will not make three minutes' difference."

"He is very anxious to get home to her!" mentally exclaimed Barbara. "I shall fly out upon him presently, or my heart will burst." Mr. Carlyle crossed the stile, helped over Barbara, and then gave her his arm again. He had taken her parasol, like he had taken it the last

1

night they had walked together; an elegant little parasol, this, of blue silk and white lace, and he did not switch the hedges with it. That night was present to Barbara now, with all its words and its delusive hopes; terribly present to her was their bitter ending.

There are moments in a woman's life when she is betrayed into forgetting the ordinary rules of conduct, and oversteps the bounds of propriety; in short, into making a scene. It may not often occur; very rarely; perhaps never to a cold, secretive nature, where impulse, feeling, and above all, temper, are under tight control. Barbara Hare was now working herself up for it. Her love, her jealousy, the never-dying pain always preying on her heart-strings since the marriage took place, her keen sense of the humiliation which had come home to her, and her temper, all were rising fiercely, bubbling up with fiery heat. The evening she had just passed in their company, their evident happiness, the endearments she had seen him (peepers never get any good for themselves) lavish on his wife, were contributing their quota to the grievance, and altogether Barbara was going swimmingly on for that state of nervous excitement when temper, and tongue, and imagination seize the reins, and fly off at a mad tangent. She felt like one isolated for ever, shut out from all that could make life dear; they were the world, she was out of it: what was her existence to him? But, a little self-control, and Barbara would not have uttered words that must remain on her mind hereafter like an incubus, dyeing her cheeks red whenever she recalled them. It must be remembered (if anything in the shape of excuse can be allowable) that she was upon terms of close intimacy with Mr. Carlyle. Independent of her own ill-omened sentiments for him, they had been reared in free intercourse, the one with the other, almost as brother and sister. Mr. Carlyle walked on, utterly unconscious that a storm was brewing; more than that, he was unconscious of having given cause for one; and dashed into an indifferent, common-place topic in the most provoking manner.

"When does the justice begin haymaking, Barbara?"

There was no reply; Barbara was swelling and panting, and trying to keep her emotion down. Mr. Carlyle tried again :

66

Barbara, I asked you which day your papa cuts his hay?"

Still no reply. Barbara was literally incapable of making one. The steam of excitement was on, nearly to its highest pitch. Her throat was working, the muscles of her mouth began to twitch, and a convulsive sob, or what sounded like it, broke from her. Mr. Carlyle turned his head hastily.

"Barbara! are you ill? What is it?"

On it came, passion, temper, wrongs, and nervousness, all boiling over together. She shrieked, she sobbed, she was in strong hysterics. Mr. Carlyle half carried, half dragged her to the second stile, and placed her against it, his arm supporting her; and an old cow and two calves, wondering what the disturbance could mean at that sober time of night, walked up and stared at them.

Barbara struggled with her emotion, struggled manfully, and the sobs and the shrieks subsided; not the excitement or the passion. She put away his arm, and stood with her back to the stile, leaning against it.

Mr. Carlyle felt inclined to fly to the pond for water, but he had nothing but his hat to get it in. "Are you better, Barbara?

What can have caused it?"

"What can have caused it!" she burst forth, giving full swing to the reins, and forgetting everything. "You can ask me that ?"

Mr. Carlyle was struck dumb: but by some inexplicable laws of sympathy, a dim and very unpleasant consciousness of the truth began to steal over him.

"I don't understand you, Barbara. If I have offended you in any way I am truly sorry."

"Truly sorry, no doubt!" was the retort, the sobs and the shrieks again alarmingly near. "What do you care for me? If I go under the sod to-morrow," stamping it with her foot, “you have your wife to care

for what am I?"

"Hush!" he interposed, glancing round, more mindful for her than she was for herself.

"Hush, yes! You would like me to hush: what is my misery to you? I would rather be in my grave, Archibald Carlyle, than endure the life I have led since you married her. My pain is greater than I well know how to bear."

"I cannot affect to misunderstand you," he said, feeling more at a nonplus than he had felt for many a day, and heartily wishing the whole female creation, save Isabel, somewhere. "But, my dear Barbara, I never gave you cause to think that I-that I-cared for you more than I did care. 99

"Never gave me cause!" she gasped. "When "When you have been coming to our house constantly, almost like my shadow; when you gave me this"-dashing open her mantle, and holding up the locket to his view; "when you have been more intimate with me than a brother."

"Stay, Barbara. There it is-a brother. I have been nothing else: it never occurred to me to be anything else," he added, in his straightforward truth.

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'Ay, as a brother, nothing else!" and her voice rose once more with her excitement; it seemed that she would not long control it. "What cared you for my feelings? what recked you that you gained my love?"

“Barbara, hush!" he implored: "do be calm and reasonable. If I ever gave you cause to think I regarded you with deeper feeling, I can only express to you my deep regret, my repentance, and assure you it was done unconsciously."

She was growing calmer. The passion was fading, leaving her face still and white. She lifted it towards Mr. Carlyle.

did

"You treated me ill in showing signs of love, if you felt it not. Why you kiss me?"

"I kissed you as I might kiss a sister. Or perhaps as a pretty girl: man likes to do so. The close terms on which our families have lived, excused—if it did not justify-a degree of familiarity, that might have been unseemly in

"Had it

"You need not tell me that," hotly interrupted Barbara. been a stranger who had won my love and then thrown me from him, do you suppose I would have reproached him as I am now reproaching you?

No: I would have died, rather than he should have suspected it. If she had not come between us, should you have loved me ?"

"Do not pursue this unthankful topic," he besought, almost wishing the staring cow would run away with her.

"I ask you, should you have loved me?" persisted Barbara, passing her handkerchief over her ashy lips.

"I don't know. How can I know? Do I not say to you, Barbara, that I only thought of you as a friend, a sister? I cannot tell what might have been."

"I could bear it better, but that it was known," she murmured. "All West Lynne had coupled us together in their prying gossip, and they have only pity to cast to me now. I would far rather you had killed me,

Archibald."

"I can

"I can but express to you my deep regret," he repeated. only hope you will soon forget it all. Let the remembrance of this conversation pass away with to-night; let us still be to each other as friends -as brother and sister. Believe me," he concluded, in a deeper tone, "the confession has not lessened you in my estimation."

He made a movement as though he would get over the stile, but Barbara did not stir: the tears were silently coursing down her pallid face. At that moment there was an interruption.

"Is that you, Miss Barbara ?"

Barbara started as if she had been shot. On the other side of the stile stood Wilson, their upper maid. How long might she have been there? She began to explain that Mr. Hare had sent Jasper out, and Mrs. Hare had thought it better to wait no longer for the man's return, so had despatched her, Wilson, for Miss Barbara. Mr. Carlyle got over the stile, and handed over Barbara.

"You need not come any further now," she said to him, in a low

tone.

"I shall see you home," was his reply: and he held out his arm. Barbara took it.

They walked on in silence. Arrived at the back gate of the Grove, which gave entrance to the kitchen-garden, Wilson went forward. Mr. Carlyle took both Barbara's hands in his.

"Good night, Barbara. God bless you."

she saw

She had had time for reflection; and, the excitement gone, her outbreak in all its shame and folly. Mr. Carlyle noticed how subdued and white she looked.

"I think I have been mad," she groaned. "I must have been mad to say what I did. Forget that it was uttered."

"I told you I would."

"You will not betray me to-to-your wife ?" she panted. "Barbara!"

"Thank you. Good night."

But he still retained her hands.

"In a short time, Barbara, I trust you will find one more worthy to receive your love than I have been." "Never," she impulsively answered. "I do not love and forget so lightly. In the years to come, in my old age, I shall still be nothing but Barbara Hare."