t is true," she added, dropping her voice to a
confidential whisper, "that had Barbara chosen she might have made a
better one. Yes, I don't mind telling you that she might have been a
peeress, instead of the wife of a mere country squire."

In truth, Mrs. Walrond was ill at ease about this marriage, why she
did not know. Something in her heart seemed to tell her that her dear
daughter's happiness would not be of long continuance. Bearing in mind
his family history, she feared for Anthony's health; indeed, she feared
a hundred things that she was quite unable to define. However, at the
little breakfast which followed she seemed quite to recover her spirits
and laughed as merrily as anyone at the speech which Lady Thompson
insisted upon making, in which she described Barbara as "her darling,
beautiful and most accomplished niece, who indeed was almost her
daughter."

CHAPTER VI

PARTED

Hard indeed would it be to find a happier marriage than that of Anthony
and Barbara. They adored each other. Never a shadow came between them.
Almost might it be said that their thoughts were one thought and their
hearts one heart. It is common to hear of twin souls, but how often are
they to be met with in the actual experience of life? Here, however,
they really might be found, or so it would seem. Had they been one
ancient entity divided long ago by the working of Fate and now brought
together once more through the power of an overmastering attraction,
their union could not have been more complete. To the eye of the
observer, and indeed to their own eyes, it showed neither seam nor flaw.
They were one and indivisible.

About such happiness as this there is something alarming, something
ominous. Mrs. Walrond felt it from the first, and they, the two persons
concerned, felt it also.

"Our joy frightens me," said Anthony to Barbara one day. "I feel like
that Persian monarch who threw his most treasured ring into the sea
because he was too fortunate; you remember the sea refused the offering,
for the royal cook found it in the mouth of a fish."

"Then, dear, he was doubly fortunate, for he made his sacrifice and kept
his ring."

Anthony, seeing that Barbara had never heard the story and its ending,
did not tell it to her, but she read something of what was passing in
his mind, as very often she had the power to do.

"Dearest," she said earnestly, "I know what you think. You think that
such happiness as ours will not be allo