that piece of hair you prize,
Barbara," he concluded, dropping his voice.

"What piece?" asked Mrs. Hare.

Mr. Carlyle glanced round the room, as if fearful the very walls might
hear his whisper. "Richard's. Barbara showed it me one day when she was
turning out her desk, and said it was a curl taken off in that illness."

Mrs. Hare sank back in her chair, and hid her face in her hands,
shivering visibly. The words evidently awoke some poignant source of
deep sorrow. "Oh, my boy! My boy!" she wailed--"my boy! My unhappy boy!
Mr. Hare wonders at my ill-health, Archibald; Barbara ridicules it; but
there lies the source of all my misery, mental and bodily. Oh, Richard!
Richard!"

There was a distressing pause, for the topic admitted of neither hope
nor consolation. "Put your chain on again, Barbara," Mr. Carlyle
said, after a while, "and I wish you health to wear it out. Health and
reformation, young lady!"

Barbara smiled and glanced at him with her pretty blue eyes, so full of
love. "What have you brought for Cornelia?" she resumed.

"Something splendid," he answered, with a mock serious face; "only I
hope I have not been taken in. I bought her a shawl. The venders vowed
it was true Parisian cashmere. I gave eighteen guineas for it."

"That is a great deal," observed Mrs. Hare. "It ought to be a very good
one. I never gave more than six guineas for a shawl in all my life."

"And Cornelia, I dare say, never more than half six," laughed Mr.
Carlyle. "Well, I shall wish you good evening, and go to her; for if she
knows I am back all this while, I shall be lectured."

He shook hands with them both. Barbara, however, accompanied him to the
front door, and stepped outside with him.

"You will catch cold, Barbara. You have left your shawl indoors."

"Oh, no, I shall not. How very soon you are leaving. You have scarcely
stayed ten minutes."

"But you forget I have not been at home."

"You were on your road to Beauchamp's, and would not have been at home
for an hour or two in that case," spoke Barbara, in a tone that savored
of resentment.

"That was different; that was upon business. But, Barbara, I think your
mother looks unusually ill."

"You know she suffers a little thing to upset her; and last night she
had what she calls one of her dreams," answered Barbara. "She says that
it is a warning that something bad is going to happen, and she has been
in the most unhappy, feverish state possible all day. Papa has