Miss Carlyle emitted some dismal groans.

“That ever I should have lived to see this day!  To hear money talked of as though it were dirt.  And what’s to become of your business?” she sharply added.  “Is that to be let run to rack and ruin, while you are kicking up your heels in that wicked London, under plea of being at the House night after night?”

“Cornelia,” he gravely said, “were I dead, Dill could carry on the business just as well as it is being carried on now.  I might go into a foreign country for seven years and come back to find the business as flourishing as ever, for Dill could keep it together.  And even were the business to drop off—­though I tell you it will not do so—­I am independent of it.”

Miss Carlyle faced tartly round upon Barbara.

“Have you been setting him on to this?”

“I think he had made up his mind before he spoke to me.  But,” added Barbara, in her truth, “I urged him to accept it.”

“Oh, you did!  Nicely moped and miserable you’ll be here, if he goes to London for months on the stretch.  You did not think of that, perhaps.”

“But he would not have me here,” said Barbara, her eyelashes becoming wet at the thought, as she unconsciously moved to her husband’s side.  “He would take me with him.”

Miss Carlyle made a pause, and looked at them alternately.

“Is that decided?” she asked.

“Of course it is,” laughed Mr. Carlyle, willing to joke the subject and his sister into good-humor.  “Would you wish to separate man and wife, Cornelia?”

She made no reply.  She rapidly tied her bonnet-strings, the ribbons trembling ominously in her fingers.

“You are not going, Cornelia?  You must stay to dinner, now that you are here—­it is ready—­and we will talk this further over afterward.”

“This has been dinner enough for me for one day,” spoke she, putting on her gloves.  “That I should have lived to see my father’s son throw up his business, and change himself into a lazy, stuck-up parliament man!”

“Do stay and dine with us, Cornelia; I think I can subdue your prejudices, if you will let me talk to you.”

“If you wanted to talk to me about it, why did you not come in when you left the office?” cried Miss Corny, in a greater amount of wrath than she had shown yet.  And there’s no doubt that, in his not having done so, lay one of the sore points.

“I did not think of it,” said Mr. Carlyle.  “I should have come in and told you of it to-morrow morning.”

“I dare say you would,” she ironically answered.  “Good evening to you both.”

And, in spite of their persuasions, she quitted the house and went stalking down the avenue.

Two or three days more, and the address of Mr. Carlyle to the inhabitants of West Lynne appeared in the local papers, while the walls and posts convenient were embellished with various colored placards, “Vote for Carlyle.”  “Carlyle forever!”