sed, and addressed her as she crossed the hall.

"Your dinner, ma'am?" he ventured to say.

"What's my dinner to you?" returned Miss Corny, in her wrath. "You have
had yours."

Away she strode. And thus it happened that she was at East Lynne almost
as soon as Mr. Carlyle.

"Where's Archibald?" began she, without ceremony, the moment she saw
Barbara.

"He is here. Is anything the matter?"

Mr. Carlyle, hearing the voice, came out and she pounced upon him with
her tongue.

"What's this about your becoming the new member for West Lynne?"

"West Lynne wishes it," said Mr. Carlyle. "Sit down, Cornelia."

"Sit down yourself," retorted she, keeping on her feet. "I want my
question answered. _Of course_ you will decline?"

"On the contrary, I have made up my mind to accept."

Miss Corny untied the strings of her bonnet, and flung them behind her.

"Have you counted the cost?" she asked, and there was something quite
sepulchral in her solemn tone.

"I have given it consideration, Cornelia; both as regards money and
time. The expenses are not worth naming, should there be no opposition.
And if there is any--"

"Ay!" groaned Miss Corny. "If there is?"

"Well? I am not without a few hundred to spare for the playing," he
said, turning upon her the good-humored light of his fine countenance.

Miss Carlyle emitted some dismal groans.

"That ever I should have lived to see this day! To hear money talked
of as though it were dirt. And what's to become of your business?" she
sharply added. "Is that to be let run to rack and ruin, while you are
kicking up your heels in that wicked London, under plea of being at the
House night after night?"

"Cornelia," he gravely said, "were I dead, Dill could carry on the
business just as well as it is being carried on now. I might go into a
foreign country for seven years and come back to find the business as
flourishing as ever, for Dill could keep it together. And even were
the business to drop off--though I tell you it will not do so--I am
independent of it."

Miss Carlyle faced tartly round upon Barbara.

"Have you been setting him on to this?"

"I think he had made up his mind before he spoke to me. But," added
Barbara, in her truth, "I urged him to accept it."

"Oh, you did! Nicely moped and miserable you'll be here, if he goes to
London for months on the stretch. You did not think of that, perhaps."

"But he would not have me here," said Barbara, her eyelashes becomi