letter, and the letter in the same handwriting which he had received at Bissett; but she had no actual proofs that they were not such as should have been sent to any properly-conducted man. Great Heaven, if she had been too precipitate! if she had brought about an _exposé_ by rashness and wretched jealousy; if she had wrongly suspected that kind and generous soul, and cruelly stabbed him without hearing his defence! As Barbara turned these matters in her mind, sitting in her bedroom on the first night of her arrival in Saxe-Coburg Square, she felt the whole current of her being setting towards Frank; and she covered with her tears and kisses his miniature which hung in a locket at her watch-chain. Must this be the end of it? could her fatal folly--if folly it were--darken the rest of her life? Oh, no! she could never acknowledge her error,--that would be impossible; her pride would never permit her to take the first steps towards a reconciliation: but Frank would come--she knew it; he would come and ask her to return; and she would go; and the rest of their life should be unclouded happiness. But Frank did not come; and the next morning when Barbara found the hours wearing very slowly by, and no solution of her wretchedness arrived at; when little Alice Schröder's well-meant chatter --well-meant, intended to be consolatory, but still chatter after all--had utterly failed in giving the smallest consolation; when Captain Lyster had called, and having been properly prepared by Mrs. Schröder before he saw Barbara, had evidently the greatest difficulty in assuming ignorance and unconcern; when the day had worn on, and no progress had been made by her in any one way,--the bitter spirit rose in her more strongly than ever, and she felt more and more impressed as to the righteousness of her cause. The fact that Frank had not come to her, crying "peccavi," and imploring her to return, had, to a very great extent, convinced her that he must have been grievously in the wrong. Fully prepared not merely to forgive him what he had not done, but to be generous enough to meet him half way in an advance which ought to have been made by her alone, she was annoyed beyond description at his making no sign; and each hour that passed over her head strengthened her obstinacy and deepened her misery.