ed to claim his
bright-eyed property if he had been alive at the end of the twelve
months.

As there was no husband to live with her, Barbara had relinquished the
house prepared for them by her father, and taken up her abode anew at
Chene Manor, as in the days of her girlhood. By degrees the episode with
Edmond Willowes seemed but a fevered dream, and as the months grew to
years Lord Uplandtowers' friendship with the people at Chene--which had
somewhat cooled after Barbara's elopement--revived considerably, and he
again became a frequent visitor there. He could not make the most
trivial alteration or improvement at Knollingwood Hall, where he lived,
without riding off to consult with his friend Sir John at Chene; and thus
putting himself frequently under her eyes, Barbara grew accustomed to
him, and talked to him as freely as to a brother. She even began to look
up to him as a person of authority, judgment, and prudence; and though
his severity on the bench towards poachers, smugglers, and
turnip-stealers was matter of common notoriety, she trusted that much of
what was said might be misrepresentation.

Thus they lived on till her husband's absence had stretched to years, and
there could be no longer any doubt of his death. A passionless manner of
renewing his addresses seemed no longer out of place in Lord
Uplandtowers. Barbara did not love him, but hers was essentially one of
those sweet-pea or with-wind natures which require a twig of stouter
fibre than its own to hang upon and bloom. Now, too, she was older, and
admitted to herself that a man whose ancestor had run scores of Saracens
through and through in fighting for the site of the Holy Sepulchre was a
more desirable husband, socially considered, than one who could only
claim with certainty to know that his father and grandfather were
respectable burgesses.

Sir John took occasion to inform her that she might legally consider
herself a widow; and, in brief; Lord Uplandtowers carried his point with
her, and she married him, though he could never get her to own that she
loved him as she had loved Willowes. In my childhood I knew an old lady
whose mother saw the wedding, and she said that when Lord and Lady
Uplandtowers drove away from her father's house in the evening it was in
a coach-and-four, and that my lady was dressed in green and silver, and
wore the gayest hat and feather that ever were seen; though whether it
was that the green did not suit her c