was living the last half hour over again. "'Don't say I never gave you
anything,'" she murmured; "did he allude to the chain or to the--kiss?
Oh, Archibald, why don't you say that you love me?"

Mr. Carlyle had been all his life upon intimate terms with the Hare
family. His father's first wife--for the late lawyer Carlyle had been
twice married--had been a cousin of Justice Hare's, and this had caused
them to be much together. Archibald, the child of the second Mrs.
Carlyle, had alternately teased and petted Anne and Barbara Hare, boy
fashion. Sometimes he quarreled with the pretty little girls, sometimes
he caressed them, as he would have done had they been his sisters; and
he made no scruple of declaring publicly to the pair that Anne was his
favorite. A gentle, yielding girl she was, like her mother; whereas
Barbara displayed her own will, and it sometimes clashed with young
Carlyle's.

The clock struck ten. Mrs. Hare took her customary sup of brandy and
water, a small tumbler three parts full. Without it she believed
she could never get to sleep; it deadened unhappy thought, she said.
Barbara, after making it, had turned again to the window, but she did
not resume her seat. She stood right in front of it, her forehead bent
forward against its middle pane. The lamp, casting a bright light, was
behind her, so that her figure might be distinctly observable from the
lawn, had any one been there to look upon it.

She stood there in the midst of dreamland, giving way to all its
enchanting and most delusive fascinations. She saw herself, in
anticipation, the wife of Mr. Carlyle, the envied, thrice envied, of all
West Lynne; for, like as he was the dearest on earth to her heart, so
was he the greatest match in the neighborhood around. Not a mother but