a scorching wave of fire. What would her mother say? Even in her misery she was childish enough to wince at the thought of her sisters at home. She had been proud to be mistress of a house while they were still in the school-room, and the idea that she had been wanting in dignity, perhaps even in modesty, and that she might be ostentatiously controlled and watched, by way of punishment, was intolerable to her. To be humiliated before Louisa and Hetty--how could she endure it? They were not ill-natured, but they had a little resented her advancement, and Barbara, as she lay in her great over-shadowing bed, could fancy all the out-spoken comments and questionings in the roomy attic where the three used to sleep. She did not want to go back to the Devonshire vicarage, and yet Mitchelhurst was fast becoming hateful to her. The pictures on the walls gazed at her with Reynold's eyes, his presence haunted the house from which he had been banished. What was the wrong that she had done him? She did not know, and the uncertainty seemed to mock her as he had mocked her that night. The poor child said to herself quite seriously that he had taken away all her youth and happiness. She fancied that she felt old and weary as the days went by, fretting her simple heart with unacknowledged fear. And now suddenly came the message of Adrian's love, and lifted her above all her dreary little troubles. What did it matter that it was uttered by those dry, bloodless lips, which stumbled over the blissful words? What did anything matter since Adrian cared for her, and life was all to come? Why had she tormented herself about Reynold Harding! _Reynold Harding!_ He was utterly insignificant, he was nobody! She could tell Adrian about that expedition of hers, it was so unimportant, so trivial, that he could not be jealous; he could not mind. Adrian's jealousy! There was something delightful, even in that terrible possibility. But he would not be jealous, everything was warm, and glad, and full of sunshine when Adrian was there.