“How did you come over her?” demanded the justice, who had already given his gratified consent, and who now entered in his dressing gown and morning wig.  “Others have tried it on, and Barbara would not listen to them.”

“I suppose I must have cast a spell upon her,” answered Mr. Carlyle, breaking into a smile.

“Here she is.  Barbara,” carried on the unceremonious justice, “what is it that you see in Carlyle more than anybody else?”

Barbara’s scarlet cheeks answered for her.  “Papa,” she said, “Otway Bethel is at the door asking to speak to you.  Jasper says he won’t come in.”

“Then I’m sure I’m not going out to him in the cold.  Here, Mr. Otway, what are you afraid of?” he called out.  “Come in.”

Otway Bethel made his appearance in his usual sporting costume.  But he did not seem altogether at his ease in the presence of Mrs. Hare and Barbara.

“The colonel wished to see you, justice, and ask you if you had any objection to the meeting’s being put off from one o’clock till two,” cried he, after nodding to Mr. Carlyle.  “He has got a friend coming to see him unexpectedly who will leave again by the two o’clock train.”

“I don’t care which it is,” answered Mr. Hare.  “Two o’clock will do as well as one, for me.”

“That’s all right, then; and I’ll drop in upon Herbert and Pinner and acquaint them.”

Miss Carlyle’s cold was better that evening, in fact she seemed quite herself again, and Mr. Carlyle introduced the subject of his marriage.  It was after dinner that he began upon it.

“Cornelia, when I married Lady Isabel Vane, you reproached me severely with having kept you in the dark—­”

“If you had not kept me in the dark, but consulted me, as any other Christian would, the course of events would have been wholly changed, and the wretchedness and disgrace that fell on this house been spared to it,” fiercely interrupted Miss Carlyle.

“We will leave the past,” he said, “and consider the future.  I was about to remark, that I do not intend to fall under your displeasure again for the like offense.  I believe you have never wholly forgiven it.”

“And never shall,” cried she, impetuously.  “I did not deserve the slight.”

“Therefore, almost as soon as I know it myself, I acquaint you.  I am about to marry a second time, Cornelia.”

Miss Carlyle started up.  Her spectacles dropped off her nose, and a knitting-box which she happened to have on her knees, clattered to the floor.

“What did you say?” she uttered, aghast.

“I’m about to marry.”

“You!”

“I.  Is there anything so very astonishing in it?”

“For the love of common sense, don’t go and make such a fool of yourself.  You have done it once; was not that enough for you, but you must run your head into the noose again?”

“Now, Cornelia, can you wonder that I do not speak of things when you meet them in this way?  You treat me just as you did when I was a child.  It is very foolish.”