It was an incongruous business altogether. It was as if a breath from a burial vault had quickened the faint flame in Barbara's heart to sudden splendour, for if old Hayes had actually been the mummy he very much resembled, he could not have been more remote from any comprehension of the message which he had delivered. His lips had relaxed in utter feebleness, and the secret had escaped. He did not see the look which flashed into the girl's eyes, and when Mrs. Strange, who might have been more observant, came to take her place by the bedside, Barbara stole softly away, hanging her head in the consciousness of those flushed cheeks, which seemed too like holiday wear for such a melancholy time. Her mother might have been surprised, for she had been a little uneasy, fancying that the girl looked sad. Barbara was but a young thing, and had been left too long shut up with but dismal company. And, if Mrs. Strange had only known it, the poor little girl had been her own most dismal company. From the time that Reynold Harding went away she had been restless, frightened, and miserable. When the exaltation of that evening had passed, a sudden terror at the thought of her own daring overtook her. She was not only afraid of her uncle's anger, but doubtful whether she had not really committed an unpardonable sin against the social law. When she hurried to Harding with the letters, she had somehow vaguely believed that he would shelter her, that he would stand by her if she were blamed. And when he had played with her, refused to trust her, and vanished into the night with a mocking smile, leaving her utterly alone, she had felt absurdly desolate. At first she had waited, in sickening apprehension, for her uncle to hear of her visit to Mr. Harding. Fate, however, seemed whimsically inclined to protect her. First there was the storm of rain which prevented a meeting with all the gossips of Mitchelhurst at the Penny Reading. Then, a day or two later, came Mr. Hayes' accident--a mere slip on the stairs, it was supposed, till the doctor hinted at something in the nature of a fit. Barbara saw that detection was postponed, but still she felt that the sword hung over her head, and night after night she tossed in an agony of doubt. Had she really done anything very dreadful? She recalled Mr. Harding's ambiguous words and glances--did they mean that he thought lightly of a girl who would go to him as she had done? Over and over again she asked the useless questions--Did they mean that?--Did they not?--- What _did_ they mean? And leaving his meaning out of the matter, what would other people say? Suppose she went and told them--ah! but how and what would she tell them? She might say, "I found I hadn't posted Mr. Harding's letters, so I took them to him at once: wasn't that the best thing to do?" How right and reasonable it sounded! But if she said, "I went secretly to a man's lodgings at night----" at the mere thought a blush passed over her like