“Nonsense!” laughed Mr. Carlyle.  “I’ll tell you both how I happened to buy it.  I went into a jeweller’s about my watch, which has taken to lose lately in a most unceremonious fashion, and there I saw a whole display of chains hanging up; some ponderous enough for a sheriff, some light and elegant enough for Barbara.  I dislike to see a thick chain on a lady’s neck.  They put me in mind of the chain she lost, the day she and Cornelia went with me to Lynchborough, which loss Barbara persisted in declaring was my fault, for dragging her through the town sight-seeing, while Cornelia did her shopping—­for it was then the chain was lost.”

“But I was only joking when I said so,” was the interruption of Barbara.  “Of course it would have happened had you not been with me; the links were always snapping.”

“Well, these chains in the shop in London put me in mind of Barbara’s misfortune, and I chose one.  Then the shopman brought forth some lockets, and enlarged upon their convenience for holding deceased relatives’ hair, not to speak of sweethearts’, until I told him he might attach one.  I thought it might hold 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.”