u and that--that beast,
located, as the fellow was, in the house. He replied that no such
suspicion had ever occurred to him. He placed the most implicit
confidence in you, and would have trusted you with the creature around
the world, aye, with any one else."

She entwined her hands one within the other, pressing them to pain. It
would not deaden the pain at her heart.

"Carlyle told me he had been unusually occupied during the stay of that
man. Besides his customary office work, his time was taken up with some
private business for a family in the neighborhood, and he had repeatedly
to see them, more particularly the daughter, after office hours. Very
old acquaintances of his, he said, relatives of the Carlyle family; and
he was as anxious about the secret--a painful one--as they were. This,
I observed to him, may have rendered him unobservant to what was passing
at home. He told me, I remember, that on the very evening of the--the
catastrophe, he ought to have gone with you to a dinner party, but most
important circumstances arose, in connection with the affair, which
obliged him to meet two gentlemen at his office, and to receive them in
secret, unknown to his clerks."

"Did he mention the name of the family?" inquired Lady Isabel, with
white lips.

"Yes, he did. I forgot it, though. Rabbit! Rabit!--some such name as
that."

"Was it Hare?"

"That was it--Hare. He said you appeared vexed that he did not accompany
you to the dinner; and seeing that he intended to go in afterward, but
was prevented. When the interview was over in his office, he was again
detained at Mrs. Hare's house, and by business as impossible to avoid as
the other."

"Important business!" she echoed, giving way for a moment to the
bitterness of former feelings. "He was promenading in their garden by
moonlight with Barbara--Miss Hare. I saw them as my carriage passed."

"And you were jealous that he should be there!" exclaimed Lord Mount
Severn, with mocking reproach, as he detected her mood. "Listen!" he
whispered, bending his head toward her. "While you may have thought, as
your present tone would seem to intimate, that they were pacing there
to enjoy each other's society, know that they--Carlyle, at any rate--was
pacing the walk to keep guard. One was within that house--for a short
half hour's interview with his poor mother--one who lives in danger of
the scaffold, to which his own father would be the first to deliver
him up. They were