Dismissed temporarily, but by no means forgotten, by no means laid aside by either of them. Captain Lyster called the next day while Frank was at the office, eager to see whether Mrs. Churchill had repented of the task she had undertaken in counselling and warning Alice Schröder; and Barbara told her husband on his return of the visit she had had, and mentioned it with eyes which a desire not to look conscious rendered somewhat defiant, and with cheeks which flushed simply because it was the last thing they ought to have done. Heaven knows Barbara Churchill had nothing to be ashamed of in being visited by Captain Lyster. She never had the smallest sign of a feeling stronger than friendship for him, and yet she felt somewhat guilty, as she acknowledged to herself that his visit had given her very great pleasure. The truth was that the garden-party at Uplands had completely upset the current of Barbara's life. When, in the first wild passion of her love for him who became her husband, she had willingly forfeited all that had hitherto been the pleasure of her life,--the luxury and admiration in which she had been reared, the pleasant surroundings which had been hers since her cradle,--she had found something in exchange. She had given up half-a-hundred friendships, which she knew to be hollow and empty; but she had consoled herself with one vast love, which she believed to be lasting and true, and which, after all, was a novelty. As has been said, Barbara had had her flirtations innumerable, but she had never known before what love was; and having a very sensitive organisation, and going in heart and soul for the new passion, she had not in any great degree, at all events felt the alteration in her position. Although every thing was different and inferior, every thing was in some degree connected with him, who was paramount in her idea to any thing she had ever known. She might feel the dulness of the neighbourhood, the smallness of the house, the difference in the society and in her own occupations and amusements; but all these were part and parcel of that sun of her existence--her husband; that great luminary, in whose brilliant rays all little gloom-spots were swallowed up and merged. Even when the glamour died away, and the blacknesses stood out in bold relief, she had been so dazed by the brightness, and, owing to the thorough change, the events of her past life seemed so far away, as to awaken but very little remorse or regret. She was beginning to bear with something like patience the prosiness of her mother-in-law, the spiteful criticisms of Mrs. Harding, the hideous vulgarity of some of her other neighbours. But the visit to Uplands came upon her as a terrific shock. Once more mixing in her old society, hearing the fashionable jargon to which she had been accustomed from her youth up; meeting those who had always looked up to her as their superior in beauty, and consequently in