“Nobody.  I suppose I am,” he thoughtfully added.  “If Joyce or Lucy cried, now, there’d be some sense in it, for they have known me all my life.”

“You are so apt to fancy things!  You are always doing it.  It is not likely that madame would be crying because you are ill.”

Madame came in with the bank-note.  Barbara thanked her, ran upstairs, and in another minute or two was in her carriage.

She was back again, and dressing when the gentlemen returned to dinner.  Mr. Carlyle came upstairs.  Barbara, like most persons who do things without reflection, having had time to cool down from her ardor, was doubting whether she had acted wisely in sending so precipitately for Richard.  She carried her doubt and care to her husband, her sure refuge in perplexity.

“Archibald, I fear I have done a foolish thing.”

He laughed.  “I fear we all do that at times, Barbara.  What is it?”

He had seated himself in one of Barbara’s favorite low chairs, and she stood before him, leaning on his shoulder, her face a little behind, so that he could not see it.  In her delicacy she would not look at him while she spoke what she was going to speak.

“It is something that I have had upon my mind for years, and I did not like to tell it to you.”

“For years?”

“You remember that night, years ago, when Richard was at the Grove in disguise—­”

“Which night, Barbara?  He came more than once.”

“The night—­the night that Lady Isabel quitted East Lynne,” she answered, not knowing how better to bring it to his recollection and she stole her hand lovingly into his, as she said it.  “Richard came back after his departure, saying he had met Thorn in Bean lane.  He described the peculiar motion of the hand as he threw back his hair from his brow; he spoke of the white hand and the diamond ring—­how it glittered in the moonlight.  Do you remember?”

“I do.”

“The motion appeared perfectly familiar to me, for I had seen it repeatedly used by one then staying at East Lynne.  I wondered you did not recognize it.  From that night I had little doubt as to the identity of Thorn.  I believed that he and Captain Levison were one.”

A pause.  “Why did you not tell me so, Barbara?”

“How could I speak of that man to you, at that time?  Afterwards, when Richard was here, that snowy winter’s day, he asserted that he knew Sir Frances Levison; that he had seen him and Thorn together; and that put me off the scent.  But to-day, as I was passing the Raven, in the carriage—­going very slow, on account of the crowd—­he was perched out there, addressing the people, and I saw the very same action—­the old action that I had used to see.”

Barbara paused.  Mr. Carlyle did not interrupt her.