Drawing her inside their chamber, he broke the news to her soothingly and tenderly, making light of it.

She burst into tears.  “You are not deceiving me, Archibald?  Papa is not dead?”

“Dead!” cheerfully echoed Mr. Carlyle, in the same tone he might have used had Barbara wondered whether the justice was taking a night airing for pleasure in a balloon.  “Wilson has indeed frightened you, love.  Dress yourself, and we will go and see him.”

At that moment Barbara recollected William.  Strange that she should have been the first to do so—­before Lady Isabel—­before Mr. Carlyle.  She ran out again to the corridors, where the boy stood shivering.  “He may have caught his death!” she uttered, snatching him up in her arms.  “Oh, Wilson!  What have you done?  His night-gown is damp and cold.”

Unfit as she was for the burden, she bore him to her own bed.  Wilson was not at leisure to attend to reproaches just then.  She was engaged in a wordy war with Jasper, leaning over the balustrades to carry it on.

“I never told you there was a fire!” indignantly denied Jasper.

“You did.  I opened the nursery window and called out ‘Is it fire?’ and you answered ‘Yes.’”

“You called out ‘Is it Jasper?’ What else should I say but ‘Yes,’ to that?  Fire?  Where was the fire likely to be—­in the park?”

“Wilson take the children back to bed,” authoritatively spoke Mr. Carlyle, as he advanced to look down into the hall.  “John, are you there?  The close carriage, instantly—­look sharp.  Madame Vine, pray don’t continue to hold that heavy boy; Joyce can’t you relieve madame?”

In crossing back to his room, Mr. Carlyle had brushed past madame, and noticed that she appeared to be shaking, as with the weight of Archibald.  In reality she was still alarmed, not understanding yet the cause of the commotion.  Joyce, who comprehended it as little, and had stood with her arms round Lucy, advanced to take Archibald, and Mr. Carlyle disappeared.  Barbara had taken off her own warm night-gown then, and put it upon William in place of his cold one—­had struck a light and was busily dressing herself.

“Just feel his night-gown Archibald!  Wilson—­”

A shrill cry of awful terror interrupted the words, and Mr. Carlyle made one bound out again.  Barbara followed; the least she thought was that Wilson had dropped the baby in the hall.

That was not the catastrophe.  Wilson, with the baby and Lucy, had already disappeared up the staircase, and Madame Vine was disappearing.  Archibald lay on the soft carpet of the corridor, where madame had stood; for Joyce, in the act of taking him, had let him slip to the ground—­let him fall from sheer terror.  She held on to the balustrades, her face ghastly, her mouth open, her eyes fixed in horror—­altogether an object to look upon.  Archie gathered himself on his sturdy legs, and stood staring.

“Why, Joyce!  What is the matter with you?” cried Mr. Carlyle.  “You look as if you had seen a spectre.”