“A pack of rubbish!” remarked Joyce. “That tells nothing.”
“I don’t say it does. There’s not a young man living but what’s fond of a sly kiss in the dark, if he can get it. He gave her that locket and chain she wears.”
“Who wears?” retorted Joyce, determined not graciously to countenance the subject. “I don’t want to hear anything about it.”
“‘Who,’ now! Why, Miss Barbara. She has hardly had it off her neck since, my belief is she wears it in her sleep.”
“More simpleton she,” returned Joyce.
“The night before he left West Lynne to marry Lady Isabel—and didn’t the news come upon us like a thunderclap!—Miss Barbara had been at Miss Carlyle’s and he brought her home. A lovely night it was, the moon rising, and nearly as light as day. He somehow broke her parasol in coming home, and when they got to our gate there was a love scene.”
“Were you a third in it?” sarcastically demanded Joyce.
“Yes—without meaning to be. It was a regular love scene; I could hear enough for that. If ever anybody thought to be Mrs. Carlyle, Barbara did that night.”
“Why, you great baby! You have just said it was the night before he went to get married!”
“I don’t care, she did. After he was gone, I saw her lift up her hands and her face in ecstacy, and say he would never know how much she loved him until she was his wife. Be you very sure, Joyce, many a love-passage had passed between them two; but I suppose when my lady was thrown in his way he couldn’t resist her rank and her beauty, and the old love was cast over. It is in the nature of man to be fickle, specially those that can boast of their own good looks, like Mr. Carlyle.”