ale creation, save Isabel, somewhere. "But my dear Barbara. I never
gave you cause to think I--that I--cared for you more than I did."

"Never gave me cause!" she gasped. "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.

"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 feelings, 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 toward Mr. Carlyle.

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

"You need not tell me that," hotly interrupted Barbara. "Had it 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 that 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 on me now. I would far rather you have killed me,
Archibald."

"I can but express to you my deep regret," he repeated. "I can only hope
you will soon forget it all. Let the