For they immediately recalled to her recollection her several interviews with her aunt, Miss Lexden, when she first announced the engagement with Frank, and she remembered the acrimony with which the old lady had spoken of the class to which her intended husband belonged. The very words her aunt had used were ringing in her ears. "If I were to see you with broken health, with broken spirits, ill-used, deserted--as is likely enough, for I know these people,--I would not lift one finger to help you after your degradation of me!" "For I know these people!" Too well she knew them, it appears, when she predicated what had actually occurred. Not deserted, though; that at least could never be cast in her teeth. It was she who had taken the initiative:--she who had broken the bonds and--what could the world say to that? Would it not denounce her conduct as strange, unwomanly, and unwifelike? And if it did, what did she care? Her pride, her spirit, had often been spoken of; and she felt in no way ashamed of having permitted herself to be swayed by them in this great trial of her life. There must be many who would thoroughly understand her conduct, and sympathise with her; and even if there were none, she had the courage and the determination to stand alone. That she must to a great extent have right on her side--that what she had done could not be looked upon as extravagant or unjustifiable--was proved, she argued to herself, by the kind reception she had met with at the hands of Mr. Schröder, a man who, as she judged from all she had heard and seen of him; would not be likely lightly to pass over any breach of decorum. How or where the rest of her life was to be passed engrossed very little of her attention at first. She knew that there was no chance of reconciliation with her aunt; nor did she wish it. She had quarrelled with her husband, certainly, and would never be induced to live with him again; but her cheek flushed when she remembered what insults had been heaped upon Frank by her aunt; and she thought almost tenderly of him as she decided that after these insults nothing would induce her to humiliate herself to Miss Lexden's caprices. The thought of writing to Sir Marmaduke Wentworth crossed her mind; but Alice Schröder had told her that Sir Marmaduke was laid up with a dangerous illness in the Pyrenees; it would be very inopportune to worry him, then, with domestic dissensions; and moreover Barbara was in very great doubt as to whether the old gentleman, were he able, would not take an active part in promoting a peace, and whether he would not strongly disapprove of, and openly condemn, the course she had taken. He had a very high opinion of Frank Churchill, who was his godson; and unless it could be distinctly proved that he had committed himself--unless it could be distinctly proved--could it? what proof was there? had not her pride and spirit involved her in a snare? how could she make her case good before an unbiassed judge? There was the