"Nonsense!" crossly rejoined Joyce.

"You may cry out 'nonsense' forever, Joyce, but they would," went on Wilson. "And she would snap him up to a dead certainty; she'd never let him escape her a second time. She is as much in love with him as she ever was!"

"It was all talk and fancy," said Joyce. "West Lynne must be busy. Mr.

Carlyle never cared for her."

"That's more than you know. I have seen a little, Joyce; I have seen him kiss her."

"A pack of rubbish!" remarked Joyce. "That tells nothing."

"I don't say it does. There's not a young man living but what's fond of a sly kiss in the dark, if he can get it. He gave her that locket and chain she wears."

"Who wears?" retorted Joyce, determined not graciously to countenance the subject. "I don't want to hear anything about it."

"'Who,' now! Why, Miss Barbara. She has hardly had it off her neck since, my belief is she wears it in her sleep."

"More simpleton she," returned Joyce.

"The night before he left West Lynne to marry Lady Isabel--and didn't the news come upon us like a thunderclap!--Miss Barbara had been at Miss Carlyle's and he brought her home. A lovely night it was, the moon rising, and nearly as light as day. He somehow broke her parasol in coming home, and when they got to our gate there was a love scene."

"Were you a third in it?" sarcastically demanded Joyce.

"Yes--without meaning to be. It was a regular love scene; I could hear enough for that. If ever anybody thought to be Mrs. Carlyle, Barbara did that night."

"Why, you great baby! You have just said it was the night before he went to get married!"

"I don't care, she did. After he was gone, I saw her lift up her hands and her face in ecstacy, and say he would never know how much she loved him until she was his wife. Be you very sure, Joyce, many a love-pa.s.sage had pa.s.sed between them two; but I suppose when my lady was thrown in his way he couldn't resist her rank and her beauty, and the old love was cast over. It is in the nature of man to be fickle, specially those that can boast of their own good looks, like Mr. Carlyle."

"Mr. Carlyle's not fickle."

"I can tell you more yet. Two or three days after that, Miss Corny came up to our house with the news of his marriage. I was in mistress's bedroom, and they were in the room underneath, the windows open, and I heard Miss Corny tell the tale, for I was leaning out. Up came Miss Barbara upon an excuse and flew into her room, and I went into the corridor. A few moments and I heard a noise--it was a sort of wail, or groan--and I opened the door softly, fearing she might be fainting.

Joyce, if my heart never ached for anybody before, it ached then. She was lying upon the floor, her hands writhed together, and her poor face all white, like one in mortal agony. I'd have given a quarter's wages to be able to say a word of comfort to her; but I didn't dare interfere with such sorrow as that. I came out again and shut the door without her seeing me."

"How thoroughly stupid she must have been!" uttered Joyce, "to go caring for one who did not care for her."

"I tell you, Joyce, you don't know that he did not care. You are as obstinate as the justice, and I wish to goodness you wouldn't interrupt me. They came up here to pay the wedding visit--master, mistress, and she, came in state in the grand chariot, with the coachman and Jasper.

If you have got any memory at all, you can't fail to recollect it. Miss Barbara remained behind at East Lynne to spend the rest of the day."

"I remember it."

"I was sent to fetch her home in the evening, Jasper being out. I came the field way; for the dust by the road was enough to smother one, and by the last stile but one, what do you think I came upon?"

Joyce lifted her eyes. "A snake perhaps."

"I came upon Miss Barbara and Mr. Carlyle. What had pa.s.sed, n.o.body knows but themselves. She was leaning back against the stile, crying; low, soft sobs breaking from her, like one might expect to hear from a breaking heart. It seemed as if she had been reproaching him, as if some explanation had pa.s.sed, and I heard him say that from henceforth they could only be brother and sister. I spoke soon, for fear they should see me, and Mr. Carlyle got over the stile. Miss Barbara said to him that he need not come any further, but he held out his arm, and came with her to our back gate. I went on then to open the door, and I saw him with his head bent down to her, and her two hands held in his. We don't know how it is between them, I tell you."

"At any rate, she is a downright fool to suffer herself to love him still!" uttered Joyce, indignantly.

"So she is, but she does do it. She'll often steal out to the gate about the time she knows he'll be pa.s.sing, and watch him by, not letting him see her. It is nothing but her unhappiness, her jealousy of Lady Isabel, that makes her cross. I a.s.sure you, Joyce, in this past year she had so changed that she's not like the same person. If Mr. Carlyle should ever get tired of my lady, and--"

"Wilson," harshly interrupted Joyce, "have the goodness to recollect yourself."

"What have I said now? Nothing but truth. Men are shamefully fickle, husbands worse than sweethearts, and I'm sure I'm not thinking of anything wrong. But to go back to the argument that we began with--I say that if anything happened to my lady, Miss Barbara, as sure as fate, would step into her shoes."

"Nothing is going to happen to her," continued Joyce, with composure.

"I hope it is not, now or later--for the sake of this dear little innocent thing upon my lap," went on the undaunted Wilson. "She would not make a very kind stepmother, for it is certain that where the first wife had been hated, her children won't be loved. She would turn Mr.

Carlyle against them--"

"I tell you what it is, Wilson," interrupted Joyce, in a firm, unmistakable tone, "if you think to pursue those sort of topics at East Lynne, I shall inform my lady that you are unsuitable for the situation."

"I dare say!"

"And you know that when I make up my mind to a thing I do it," continued Joyce. "Miss Carlyle may well say you have the longest tongue in West Lynne; but you might have the grace to know that this subject is one more unsuitable to it than another, whether you are eating Mr. Hare's bread, or whether you are eating Mr. Carlyle's. Another word, Wilson; it appears to me that you have been carrying on a prying system in Mrs.

Hare's house--do not attempt such a thing in this."

"You were always one of the straight-laced sort, Joyce," cried Wilson, laughing good-humoredly. "But now that I have had my say out, I shall stop; and you need not fear I shall be such a simpleton as to go prattling of this kind of thing to the servants."

Now just fancy this conversation penetrating to Lady Isabel! She heard every word. It is all very well to oppose the argument, "Who attends to the gossip of the servants?" Let me tell you it depends upon what the subject may be, whether the gossip is attended to or not. It might not, and indeed would not, have made so great an impression upon her had she been in strong health, but she was weak, feverish, and in a state of partial delirium; and she hastily took up the idea that Archibald Carlyle had never loved her, that he had admired her and made her his wife in his ambition, but that his heart had been given to Barbara Hare.

A pretty state of excitement she worked herself into as she lay there, jealousy and fever, ay, and love too, playing pranks with her brain. It was near the dinner hour, and when Mr. Carlyle entered, he was startled to see her; her pallid cheeks were burning with a red hectic glow, and her eyes glistened with fever.

"Isabel, you are worse!" he uttered, as he approached her with a quick step.

She partially rose from the sofa, and clasped hold of him in her emotion. "Oh, Archibald! Archibald!" she uttered, "don't marry her! I could not rest in my grave."

Mr. Carlyle, in his puzzled astonishment, believed her to be laboring under some temporary hallucination, the result of weakness. He set himself to soothe her, but it seemed that she could not be soothed. She burst into a storm of tears and began again--wild words.

"She would ill-treat my child; she would draw your love from it, and from my memory. Archibald, you must not marry her!"

"You must be speaking from the influence of a dream, Isabel," he soothingly said; "you have been asleep and are not yet awake. Be still, and recollection will return to you. There, love; rest upon me."

"To think of her as your wife brings pain enough to kill me," she continued to reiterate. "Promise me that you will not marry her; Archibald, promise it!"

"I will promise you anything in reason," he replied, bewildered with her words, "but I do not know what you mean. There is no possibility of my marrying any one, Isabel; you are my wife."

"But if I die? I may--you know I may; and many think I shall--do not let her usurp my place."

"Indeed she shall not--whoever you may be talking of. What have you been dreaming? Who is it that has been troubling your mind?"

"Archibald, do you need to ask? Did you love no one before you married me? Perhaps you have loved her since--perhaps you love her still?"

Mr. Carlyle began to discern "method in her madness." He changed his cheering tone to one of grave earnestness. "Of whom to you speak, Isabel?"

"Of Barbara Hare."

He knitted his brow; he was both annoyed and vexed. Whatever had put this bygone nonsense into his wife's head? He quitted the sofa where he had been supporting her, and stood upright before her, calm, dignified, almost solemn in his seriousness.