“Out it seems to come, little by little, one wickedness after another!” resumed Barbara.  “I do not like Mr. Carlyle to hear it.  No, I don’t.  Of course there is no help for it; but he must feel it terribly, as must also Lord Mount Severn.  She was his wife, you know, and the children are hers; and to think that she—­I mean he—­must feel it for her,” went on Barbara after her sudden pause, and there was some hauteur in her tone lest she should be misunderstood.  “Mr. Carlyle is one of the very few men, so entirely noble, whom the sort of disgrace reflected from Lady Isabel’s conduct cannot touch.”

The carriage of the first guest.  Barbara ran across the room, and rattled at Mr. Carlyle’s door.  “Archibald do you hear?”

Back came the laughing answer.  “I shan’t keep them long.  But they may surely accord a few minutes’ grace to a man who has just been converted into an M. P.”

Barbara descended to the drawing-room, leaving her, that unhappy lady, to the cement and the broken pieces, and to battle as best she could with her bitter heart.  Nothing but stabs; nothing but stabs!  Was her punishment ever to end?  No.  The step she had taken in coming back to East Lynne had precluded that.

The guests arrived; all save Mr. and Mrs. Hare.  Barbara received a note from her instead.  The justice did not feel well enough to join them.

I should think he did not.

A pleasant party it was at East Lynne, and twelve o’clock struck before the carriage of the last guest drove away.  It may have been from one to two hours after that, and the house was steeped in moonlight and quietness, everybody being abed and asleep when a loud summons at the hall bell echoed through the stillness.

The first to put her head out the window was Wilson.  “Is it fire?” shrieked she, in the most excessive state of terror conceivable.  Wilson had a natural dread of fire—­some people do possess this dread more than others—­and had oftentime aroused the house to a commotion by declaring she smelt it.  “Is it fire?” shrieked Wilson.

“Yes!” was shouted at the top of a man’s voice, who stepped from between the entrance pillars to answer.

Wilson waited for no more.  Clutching at the baby with one hand—­a fine young gentleman now of near twelve months old, promising fair to be as great a source of trouble to Wilson and the nursery as was his brother Archibald, whom he greatly resembled—­and at Archie with the other, out she flew to the corridor screeching “Fire! fire! fire!” never ceasing, down tore Wilson with the four children, and burst unceremoniously into the sleeping apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle.  By this time the children, terrified out of their senses, not at Wilson’s cry of alarm, but at the summary propelling downstairs, set up a shrieking, too.  Madame Vine, believing that half the house as least was in flames, was the next to appear, throwing on a shawl she had caught up, and then came Joyce.