the guilt of Levison, but Otway
Bethel's share in the affair is a puzzle yet," replied Mrs. Carlyle.
"Both are committed for trial. Oh, that man! that man! how his sins come
out!" she continued in excitement.

Madame Vine glanced up through her spectacles.

"Would you believe," continued Barbara, dropping her voice, "that while
West Lynne, and I fear ourselves also, gave that miserable Afy credit
for having gone away with Richard, she was all the time with Levison?
Ball, the lawyer got her to confess to-day. I am unacquainted with the
details; Mr. Carlyle would not give them to me. He said the bare fact
was quite enough, and considering the associations it involved, would
not do to talk of."

Mr. Carlyle was right.

"Out it seems to come, little by little, one wickedness after another!"
resumed Barbara. "I do not like Mr. Carlyle to hear it. No, I don't. Of
course there is no help for it; but he must feel it terribly, as must
also Lord Mount Severn. She _was_ his wife, you know, and the children
are hers; and to think that she--I mean he--must feel it _for her_,"
went on Barbara after her sudden pause, and there was some hauteur in
her tone lest she should be misunderstood. "Mr. Carlyle is one of the
very few men, so entirely noble, whom the sort of disgrace reflected
from Lady Isabel's conduct cannot touch."

The carriage of the first guest. Barbara ran across the room, and
rattled at Mr. Carlyle's door. "Archibald do you hear?"

Back came the laughing answer. "I shan't keep them long. But they may
surely accord a few minutes' grace to a man who has just been converted
into an M. P."

Barbara descended to the drawing-room, leaving her, that unhappy lady,
to the cement and the broken pieces, and to battle as best she could
with her bitter heart. Nothing but stabs; nothing but stabs! Was her
punishment ever to end? No. The step she had taken in coming back to
East Lynne had precluded that.

The guests arrived; all save Mr. and Mrs. Hare. Barbara received a note
from her instead. The justice did not feel well enough to join them.

I should think he did not.

A pleasant party it was at East Lynne, and twelve o'clock struck before
the carriage of the last guest drove away. It may have been from one
to two hours after that, and the house was steeped in moonlight and
quietness, everybody being abed and asleep when a loud summons at the
hall bell echoed through the stillness.

The first to put her head out the wi