At her bedroom door, the next morning, stood Lady Isabel, listening whether the coast was clear ere she descended to the gray parlor, for she had a shrinking dread of encountering Mr. Carlyle. When he was glancing narrowly at her face the previous evening she had felt the gaze, and it impressed upon her the dread of his recognition. Not only that; he was the husband of another; therefore it was not expedient that she should see too much of him, for he was far dearer to her than he had ever been.

Almost at the same moment there burst out of a remote room—the nursery—an upright, fair, noble boy, of some five years old, who began careering along on the corridor, astride upon a hearth-broom. She did not need to be told it was her boy, Archibald; his likeness to Mr. Carlyle would have proclaimed it, even if her heart had not. In an impulse of unrestrainable tenderness, she seized the child, as he was galloping past her, and carried him into her room, broom and all.

“You must let me make acquaintance with you,” she said to him by way of excuse. “I love little boys.”

Love! Down she sat upon a low chair, the child held upon her lap, kissing him passionately, and the tears raining from her eyes. She could not have helped the tears had it been to save her life; she could as little have helped the kisses. Lifting her eyes, there stood Wilson, who had entered without ceremony. A sick feeling came over Lady Isabel: she felt as if she had betrayed herself. All that could be done now, was to make the best of it; to offer some lame excuse. What possessed her thus to forget herself?

“He did so put me in remembrance of my own children,” she said to Wilson, gulping down her emotion, and hiding her tears in the best manner she could; whilst the astonished Archibald, released now, stood with his finger in his mouth and stared at her spectacles, his great blue eyes opened to their utmost width. “When we have lost children of our own, we are apt to love fondly all we come near.”

Wilson, who stared only in a less degree than Archie, for she deemed the new governess had gone suddenly mad, gave some voluble assent, and turned her attention upon Archie.

“You naughty young monkey! How dare you rush out in that way with Sarah’s heart-broom? I’ll tell you what it is, sir, you are getting a might deal too owdacious and rumbustical for the nursery. I shall speak to your mamma about it.”

She seized hold of the child and shook him. Lady Isabel started forward, her hands up, her voice one of painful entreaty.

“Oh, don’t, don’t beat him! I cannot see him beaten.”

“Beaten!” echoed Wilson; “if he got a good beating it would be all the better for him; but it’s what he never does get. A little shake, or a tap, is all I must give; and it’s not half enough. You wouldn’t believe the sturdy impudence of that boy, madame; he runs riot, he does. The other two never gave a quarter of the trouble. Come along, you figure! I’ll have a bolt put at the top of the nursery door; and if I did, he’d be for climbing up the door-post to get at it.”

The last sentence Wilson delivered to the governess, as she jerked Archie out of the room, along the passage, and into the nursery. Lady Isabel sat down with a wrung heart, a chafed spirit. Her own child! And she might not say to the servant, you shall not beat him.

She descended to the gray parlor. The two older children and breakfast were waiting; Joyce quitted the room when she entered it.

A graceful girl of eight years old, a fragile boy a year younger, both bearing her once lovely features—her once bright and delicate complexion—her large, soft brown eyes. How utterly her heart yearned to them; but there must be no scene like there had just been above. Nevertheless she stooped and kissed them both—one kiss each of impassioned fervor. Lucy was naturally silent, William somewhat talkative.

“You are our new governess,” said he.

“Yes. We must be good friends.”

“Why not!” said the boy. “We were good friends with Miss Manning. I am to go into Latin soon—as soon as my cough’s gone. Do you know Latin?”

“No—not to teach it,” she said, studiously avoiding all endearing epithets.

“Papa said you would be almost sure not to know Latin, for that ladies rarely did. He said he should send up Mr. Kane to teach me.”

“Mr. Kane?” repeated Lady Isabel, the name striking upon her memory. “Mr. Kane, the music-master?”

“How did you know he was a music-master?” cried shrewd William. And Lady Isabel felt the red blood flush to her face at the unlucky admission she had made. It flushed deeper at her own falsehood, as she muttered some evasive words about hearing of him from Mrs. Latimer.

“Yes, he is a music-master; but he does not get much money at it, and he teaches the classics as well. He has come up to teach us music since Miss Manning left; mamma said that we ought not to lose our lessons.”

Mamma! How the word, applied to Barbara, grated on her ear.

“Whom does he teach?” she asked.

“Us two,” replied William, pointing to his sister and himself.

“Do you always take bread and milk?” she inquired, perceiving that to be what they were eating.

“We get tired of it sometimes and then we have milk and water, and bread and butter, or honey; and then we take to bread and milk again. It’s Aunt Cornelia who thinks we should eat bread and milk for breakfast. She says papa never had anything else when he was a boy.”

Lucy looked up.

“Papa would give me an egg when I breakfasted with him,” cried she, “and Aunt Cornelia said it was not good for me, but papa gave it to me all the same. I always had breakfast with him then.”

“And why do you not now?” asked Lady Isabel.

“I don’t know. I have not since mamma came.”

The word “stepmother” rose up rebelliously in the heart of Lady Isabel. Was Mrs. Carlyle putting away the children from their father?

Breakfast over, she gathered them to her, asking them various questions about their studies, their hours of recreation, the daily routine of their lives.

“This is not the schoolroom, you know,” cried William, when she made some inquiry as to their books.

“No?”

“The schoolroom is upstairs. This is for our meals, and for you in an evening.”

The voice of Mr. Carlyle was heard at this juncture in the hall, and Lucy was springing toward the sound. Lady Isabel, fearful lest he might enter if the child showed herself, stopped her with a hurried hand.

“Stay here, Isabel.”

“Her name’s Lucy,” said William, looking quickly up. “Why do you call her Isabel?”

“I thought—thought I had heard her called Isabel,” stammered the unfortunate lady, feeling quite confused with the errors she was committing.

“My name is Isabel Lucy,” said the child; “but I don’t know who could have told you, for I am never called Isabel. I have not been since—since—shall I tell you?—since mamma went away,” she concluded, dropping her voice. “Mamma that was, you know.”

“Did she go?” cried Lady Isabel, full of emotion, and possessing a very faint idea of what she was saying.

“She was kidnapped,” whispered Lucy.

“Kidnapped!” was the surprised answer.

“Yes, or she would not have gone. There was a wicked man on a visit to papa, and he stole her. Wilson said she knew he was a kidnapper before he took mamma. Papa said I was never to be called Isabel again, but Lucy. Isabel was mamma’s name.”

“How do you know papa said it?” dreamily returned Lady Isabel.

“I heard him. He said it to Joyce, and Joyce told the servants. I put only Lucy to my copies. I did put Isabel Lucy, but papa saw it one day, and he drew his pencil through Isabel, and told me to show it to Miss Manning. After that, Miss Manning let me put nothing but Lucy. I asked her why, and she told me papa preferred the name, and that I was not to ask questions.”

She could not well stop the child, but every word was rending her heart.

“Lady Isabel was our very, very own mamma,” pursued Lucy. “This mamma is not.”

“Do you love this one as you did the other?” breathed Lady Isabel.

“Oh, I loved mamma—I loved mamma!” uttered Lucy, clasping her hands. “But its all over. Wilson said we must not love her any longer, and Aunt Cornelia said it. Wilson said, if she loved us she would not have gone away from us.”

“Wilson said so?” resentfully spoke Lady Isabel.

“She said she need not let that man kidnap her. I am afraid he beat her, for she died. I lie in my bed at night, and wonder whether he did beat her, and what made her die. It was after she died that our new mamma came home. Papa said that she was to be our mamma in place of Lady Isabel and we were to love her dearly.”

“Do you love her?” almost passionately asked Lady Isabel.

Lucy shook her head.

“Not as I loved mamma.”

Joyce entered to show the way to the schoolroom, and they followed her upstairs. As Lady Isabel stood at the window, she saw Mr. Carlyle depart on foot on his way to the office. Barbara was with him, hanging fondly on his arm, about to accompany him to the park gates. So had she fondly hung, so had she accompanied him, in the days gone forever.

Barbara came into the schoolroom in the course of the morning, and entered upon the subject of their studies, the different allotted hours, some to play, some to work. She spoke in a courteous but decided tone, showing that she was the unmistakable mistress of the house and children, and meant to be. Never had Lady Isabel felt her position so keenly—never did it so gall and fret her spirit; but she bowed to meek obedience. A hundred times that day did she yearn to hold the children to her heart, and a hundred times she had to repress the longing.

In a soft, damask dress, not unlike the color of the walls from which the room took its name, a cap of Honiton lace shading her delicate features, sat Mrs. Hare. The justice was in London with Squire Pinner, and Barbara had gone to the Grove and brought her mamma away in triumph. It was evening now, and Mrs. Hare was paying a visit to the gray parlor. Miss Carlyle had been dining there, and Lady Isabel, under plea of a violent headache, had begged to decline the invitation to take tea in the drawing-room, for she feared the sharp eyes of Miss Carlyle. Barbara, upon leaving the dessert-table, went to the nursery, as usual, to her baby, and Mrs. Hare took the opportunity to go and sit a few minutes with the governess—she feared the governess must be very lonely. Miss Carlyle, scorning usage and ceremony, had remained in the dining-room with Mr. Carlyle, a lecture for him, upon some defalcation or other most probably in store. Lady Isabel was alone. Lucy had gone to keep a birthday in the neighborhood, and William was in the nursery. Mrs. Hare found her in a sad attitude, her hands pressed upon her temples. She had not yet made acquaintance with her beyond a minute’s formal introduction.

“I am sorry to hear you are not well, this evening,” she gently said.

“Thank you. My head aches much”—which was no false plea.

“I fear you must feel your solitude irksome. It is dull for you to be here all alone.”

“I am so used to solitude.”

Mrs. Hare sat down, and gazed with sympathy at the young, though somewhat strange-looking woman before her. She detected the signs of mental suffering on her face.

“You have seen sorrow,” she uttered, bending forward, and speaking with the utmost sweetness.

“Oh, great sorrow!” burst from Lady Isabel, for her wretched fate was very palpable to her mind that evening, and the tone of sympathy rendered it nearly irrepressible.

“My daughter tells me that you have lost your children, and you have lost your fortune and position. Indeed I feel for you. I wish I could comfort you!”

This did not decrease her anguish. She completely lost all self control, and a gush of tears fell from her eyes.

“Don’t pity me! Don’t pity me dear Mrs. Hare! Indeed, it only makes endurance harder. Some of us,” she added, looking up, with a sickly smile, “are born to sorrow.”

“We are all born to it,” cried Mrs. Hare. “I, in truth, have cause to say so. Oh, you know not what my position has been—the terrible weight of grief that I have to bear. For many years, I can truly say that I have not known one completely happy moment.”

“All do not have to bear this killing sorrow,” said Lady Isabel.

“Rely upon it, sorrow of some nature does sooner or later come to all. In the brightest apparent lot on earth, dark days must mix. Not that there is a doubt but that it falls unequally. Some, as you observe, seem born to it, for it clings to them all their days; others are more favored—as we reckon favor. Perhaps this great amount of trouble is no more than is necessary to take us to Heaven. You know the............