Barbara turned cold all over.  “How can it have come to light?” she breathed.

“I am at a loss to know,” said Mr. Carlyle.  “The person to mention it to me was Tom Herbert.  ‘I say,’ said he meeting me yesterday, ’what’s this row about Dick Hare?’ ‘What now?’ I asked him.  ’Why, that Dick was at West Lynne some time back, disguised as a farm laborer.’  Just the same, you see, that Locksley said to Mr. Hare.  I laughed at Tom Herbert,” continued Mr. Carlyle; “turned his report into ridicule also, before I had done with him.”

“Will it be the means of causing Richard’s detection?” murmured Mrs. Hare from between her dry lips.

“No, no,” warmly responded Mr. Carlyle.  “Had the report arisen immediately after he was really here, it might not have been so pleasant; but nearly two years have elapsed since the period.  Be under no uneasiness, dear Mrs. Hare, for rely upon it there is no cause.”

“But how could it have come out, Archibald?” she urged, “and at this distant period of time?”

“I assure you I am quite at a loss to imagine.  Had anybody at West Lynne seen and recognized Richard, they would have spoken of it at the time.  Do not let it trouble you; the rumor will die away.”

Mrs. Hare sighed deeply, and left the room to proceed to her own chamber.  Barbara and Mr. Carlyle were alone.

“Oh, that the real murderer could be discovered!” she aspirated, clasping her hands.  “To be subjected to these shocks of fear is dreadful.  Mamma will not be herself for days to come.”

“I wish the right man could be found; but it seems as far off as ever,” remarked Mr. Carlyle.

Barbara sat ruminating.  It seemed that she would say something to Mr. Carlyle, but a feeling caused her to hesitate.  When she did at length speak, it was in a low, timid voice.

“You remember the description Richard gave, that last night, of the person he had met—­the true Thorn?”

“Yes.”

“Did it strike you then—­has it ever occurred to you to think—­that it accorded with some one?”

“In what way, Barbara?” he asked, after a pause.  “It accorded with the description Richard always gave of the man Thorn.”

“Richard spoke of the peculiar movement of throwing off the hair from the forehead—­in this way.  Did that strike you as being familiar, in connection with the white hand and the diamond ring?”

“Many have a habit of pushing off their hair—­I think I do it myself sometimes.  Barbara, what do you mean?  Have you a suspicion of any one?”

“Have you?” she returned, answering the question by asking another.

“I have not.  Since Captain Thorn was disposed of, my suspicions have not pointed anywhere.”

This sealed Barbara’s lips.  She had hers, vague doubts, bringing wonder more than anything else.  At times she had thought the same doubts might have occurred to Mr. Carlyle; she now found that they had not.  The terrible domestic calamity which had happened to Mr. Carlyle the same night that Richard protested he had seen Thorn, had prevented Barbara’s discussing the matter with him then, and she had never done so since.  Richard had never been further heard of, and the affair had remained in abeyance.