"If Joel dies," she said, tears filling her eyes, "you'll have it on your conscience that you kept us apart when we might have given each other some cheer to carry us along our dark ways."
"Lucy, Lucy," cried Barbara, "put Joel out of your head. You've got a good husband, better no woman ever had. Can't you give all your love to him? Make him happy. You'll be happy then yourself. You'll find life worth living, better worth living than great-grandmother's has been; better, far better than mine. Mine's a lonely life, Lucy. There'll never be home and husband for me. But, down at the mill-house yonder, love is waiting for you. For your own sake, for Peter's sake, for Joel's sake, too, cleave to the man you've taken for better and worse."
"You should have married him yourself," replied Lucy, with a somewhat uneasy glance.
"It was not I that Peter chose for his wife," said Barbara simply.
Just then the herd brought a message from Mistress Lynn to know how much longer Barbara was going to linger at the cave.
"Tell her I've something to do that'll keep me here awhile," replied she.
Lucy bade her sister good-night and went away with the herd. She no longer wanted to fly to the sick bed of the man she loved. Weariness succeeded her passion of the morning and excitement of the night. Barbara always had this effect upon her sister. When she opened her heart to her, Barbara put it in a cleansing fire, and, though the process might be painful, it was morally purifying.
When Lucy and Tom had gone, Barbara put her hands to her head, and lifted the locks that lay so heavily upon her brow. Then she stirred the peats into flame. Her face was very white, and looked suddenly old.
All the time that she had been reasoning with Lucy she had been reasoning with herself. She had dealt with herself so severely that she was now ready to give that which conscience demanded.
She opened the oak chest. There lay her few treasures—books which Peter had given her, that she cherished more than she would have done jewels. She caught her lip between her teeth, but the hesitation was mental, not moral. Like Lucy, she was seeing visions.