“I suppose it is absurd,” was the retort of Miss Carlyle.  “I give them little of my company, especially in an evening.  They go strolling out together, or she sings to him, he hanging over her as if she were of gold:  to judge by appearances, she is more precious to him than any gold that was ever coined into money.  I’ll tell you what I saw last night.  Archibald had what he is not often subject to, a severe headache, and he went into the next room after dinner, and lay on the sofa.  She carried a cup of tea to him, and never came back, leaving her own on the table till it was perfectly cold.  I pushed open the door to tell her so.  There was my lady’s cambric handkerchief, soaked in eau-de-Cologne, lying on his forehead; and there was my lady herself, kneeling down and looking at him, he with his arm thrown around her there.  Now I just ask you, Barbara, whether there’s any sense in fadding with a man like that?  If ever he did have a headache before he was married, I used to mix him up a good dose of salts and senna, and tell him to go to bed early and sleep the pain off.”

Barbara made no reply, but she turned her face from Miss Carlyle.

On Barbara’s return to the house, she found that Mr. Carlyle and Lady Isabel were in the adjoining room, at the piano, and Barbara had an opportunity of hearing that sweet voice.  She did, as Miss Carlyle confessed to have done, pushed open the door between the two rooms, and looked in.  It was the twilight hour, almost too dusk to see; but she could distinguish Isabel seated at the piano, and Mr. Carlyle standing behind her.  She was singing one of the ballads from the opera of the “Bohemian Girl,” “When other Lips.”

“Why do you like that song so much, Archibald?” she asked when she had finished it.

“I don’t know.  I never liked it so much until I heard it from you.”

“I wonder if they are come in.  Shall we go into the next room?”

“Just this one first—­this translation from the German—­’ ’Twere vain to tell thee all I feel.’  There’s real music in that song.”

“Yes, there is.  Do you know, Archibald, your taste is just like papa’s.  He liked all these quiet, imaginative songs, and so do you.  And so do I,” she laughingly added, “if I must speak the truth.”

She ceased and began the song, singing it exquisitely, in a low, sweet, earnest tone, the chords of the accompaniment, at its conclusion, dying off gradually into silence.

“There, Archibald, I am sure I have sung you ten songs at least,” she said, leaning her head back against him, and looking at him from her upturned face.  “You ought to pay me.”

He did pay her:  holding the dear face to him, and taking from it some impassioned kisses.  Barbara turned to the window, a low moan of pain escaping her, as she pressed her forehead on one of its panes, and looked forth at the dusky night.  Isabel came in on her husband’s arm.

“Are you here alone, Miss Hare?  I really beg your pardon.  I supposed you were with Miss Carlyle.”