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Mr. Carlyle felt inclined to fly to the pond for water, but he had nothing but his hat to get it in.

"Are you better, Barbara? What can have caused it?"

"What can have caused it!" she burst forth, giving full swing to the reins, and forgetting everything. "You can ask me that ?"

Mr. Carlyle was struck dumb: but by some inexplicable laws of sympathy, a dim and very unpleasant consciousness of the truth began to steal over him.

"I don't understand you, Barbara. If I have offended you in any way I am truly sorry."

"Truly sorry, no doubt!" was the retort, the sobs and the shrieks again alarmingly near. "What do you care for me? If I go under the sod to-morrow," stamping it with her foot, "you have your wife to care for what am I?"

:

"Hush!" he interposed, glancing round, more mindful for her than she was for herself.

"Hush, yes! You would like me to hush: what is my misery to you? I would rather be in my grave, Archibald Carlyle, than endure the life I have led since you married her. My pain is greater than I well know how to bear."

"I cannot affect to misunderstand you," he said, feeling more at a nonplus than he had felt for many a day, and heartily wishing the whole female creation, save Isabel, somewhere. "But, my dear Barbara, I never gave you cause to think that I-that I-cared for you more than I did care.

"Never gave me cause!" she gasped. "When you have been coming to our house constantly, almost like my shadow; when you gave me this"-dashing open her mantle, and holding up the locket to his view; "when you have been more intimate with me than a brother.”

"Stay, Barbara. There it is—a brother. I have been nothing else: it never occurred to me to be anything else," he added, in his straightforward truth.

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Ay, as a brother, nothing else!" and her voice rose once more with her excitement; it seemed that she would not long control it. "What cared you for my feelings? what recked you that you gained my love?" "Barbara, hush!" he implored: "do be calm and reasonable. If I ever gave you cause to think I regarded you with deeper feeling, I can only express to you my deep regret, my repentance, and assure you it was done unconsciously."

She was growing calmer. The passion was fading, leaving her face still and white. She lifted it towards Mr. Carlyle.

did

"You treated me ill in showing signs of love, if you felt it not. Why you kiss me ?"

"I kissed you as I might kiss a sister. Or perhaps as a pretty girl: man likes to do so. The close terms on which our families have lived, excused-if it did not justify-a degree of familiarity, that might have been unseemly in

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"You need not tell me that," hotly interrupted Barbara. "Had it been a stranger who had won my love and then thrown me from him, do you suppose I would have reproached him as I am now reproaching you?

No: I would have died, rather than he should have suspected it. If she had not come between us, should you have loved me?"

"Do not pursue this unthankful topic," he besought, almost wishing the staring cow would run away with her.

"I ask you, should you have loved me?" persisted Barbara, passing her handkerchief over her ashy lips.

"I don't know. How can I know? Do I not say to you, Barbara, that I only thought of you as a friend, a sister? I cannot tell what might have been."

"I could bear it better, but that it was known," she murmured. "All West Lynne had coupled us together in their prying gossip, and they have only pity to cast to me now. I would far rather had killed me,

Archibald."

you

"I can but express to you my deep regret," he repeated. "I can only hope you will soon forget it all. Let the remembrance of this conversation pass away with to-night; let us still be to each other as friends -as brother and sister. Believe me," he concluded, in a deeper tone, "the confession has not lessened you in my estimation."

He made a movement as though he would get over the stile, but Barbara did not stir: the tears were silently coursing down her pallid face. At that moment there was an interruption.

"Is that you, Miss Barbara ?"

Barbara started as if she had been shot. On the other side of the stile stood Wilson, their upper maid. How long might she have been there? She began to explain that Mr. Hare had sent Jasper out, and Mrs. Hare had thought it better to wait no longer for the man's return, so had despatched her, Wilson, for Miss Barbara. Mr. Carlyle got over the stile, and handed over Barbara.

"You need not come any further now," she said to him, in a low

tone.

"I shall see you home," was his reply: and he held out his arm. Barbara took it.

Mr.

They walked on in silence. Arrived at the back gate of the Grove, which gave entrance to the kitchen-garden, Wilson went forward. Carlyle took both Barbara's hands in his.

"Good night, Barbara. God bless you."

she saw

She had had time for reflection; and, the excitement gone, her outbreak in all its shame and folly. Mr. Carlyle noticed how subdued and white she looked.

"I think I have been mad," she groaned. "I must have been mad to say what I did. Forget that it was uttered."

"I told you I would."

"You will not betray me to-to-your wife ?" she panted. "Barbara!"

"Thank you. Good night."

But he still retained her hands.

"In a short time, Barbara, I trust you will find one more worthy to receive your love than I have been." "Never," she impulsively answered. "I do not love and forget so lightly. In the years to come, in my old age, I shall still be nothing but Barbara Hare."

Mr. Carlyle walked away in a fit of musing. The revelation had given him pain (and possibly a little bit of flattery into the bargain), for he was fond of pretty Barbara. Fond in his way; not in hers; not with the sort of fondness he felt for his wife. He asked his conscience whether his manner to her in the past days had been a tinge warmer than we bestow upon a sister, and he decided that it might have been, but he most certainly had never cast a suspicion to the mischief it was doing.

"I heartily hope she'll soon find me," was his concluding thought. Hare, that's all moonshine; the

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somebody to her liking, and forget "As to living and dying Barbara sentimental rubbish that girls like

He was passing the very last tree in the park, the nearest to his house, and the interruption came from a dark form standing under it.

"Is it you, my dearest ?"

"I came out to meet you. Have you not been very long ?"

"I think I have," he answered, as he drew his wife to his side, and walked on with her. "We met one of the servants at the second stile,

but I went all the way."

"You have been intimate with the Hares ?"

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"Very."

"Then-intimate as you were-I wonder you never fell in love with

her."

Mr. Carlyle laughed; a very conscious laugh, considering the recent interview.

"Did you, Archibald ?”

The words were spoken in a low tone, almost, or he fancied it, a tone of emotion, and he looked at her in amazement. "Did I what, Isabel ?"

"You never loved Barbara Hare ?"

"Loved her! What is your head running on, Isabel? I never loved but one: and that one I made my own; my cherished wife."

PRINCE DOLGOROUKOW'S RUSSIA.*

RUSSIA is in our days, thanks to the enlightened impulse given by the Emperor Alexander II., entering upon indispensable reforms—reforms which Prince Dolgoroukow aserts can alone save her from a political cataclysm. Hence many questions surge to the surface which can only be solved by the aid of publicity, and many grievances remain to be alleviated which will probably only become so by exposure. The princely author, who now takes up the pen for this double purpose, is himself an example of a very extraordinary and anomalous state of things. He says, to write upon Russia a man must be a Russian, his country having no resemblance with any other, and its historical development having taken place under utterly exceptional circumstances. Yet he writes in France, compelled to do so by the censure, which in his own country, he says, is afflicted with two sore diseases-fear and idiocy. Again, there are five or six Russian printing-presses in Europe, and yet he writes in the French language. This, he tells us, because the retrograde party, backed by the bureaucracy-protectors of mystery and falsehood-are far more in fear of the publicity of exposure attendant upon publicity in the French language than of anything that is simply limited to the Russians themselves. Hence it is that civilisation is often as much derived from pressure coming from without, as from purely national susceptibilities.

Russia, says Prince Dolgoroukow, is, in a political and administrative point of view, a vast edifice with a European exterior, but furnished and conducted within after an Asiatic fashion. The greater portion of the Russian functionaries, disguised in more or less European costumes, exercise their powers like true Tartars. As at Naples-it is not that there are not plenty of good laws-there are fifteen volumes of one thousand pages each of laws and decrees; but the first article, by placing the emperor above all law, transforms these fifteen thick volumes into a very voluminous and a very bad joke. Russian administration reposes on the equality of all; not before the law, as in Europe, but before the capriciousness of power and the venality of the administration, as in Asia. If a law in Russia is useful to the court, or to the bureaucracy, it will be carried out with zeal; if useless, it will be neglected; if opposed to their interests, it will never be put into execution at all. The emperor reigns, the bureaucracy governs; and the latter, again, is itself swayed by allpowerful lucre. Between a people of most admirable qualities, and a Sovereign full of good and generous intentions, interposes a corrupt, greedy, thievish bureaucracy-triple extract of the worst and vilest passions. The emperor is thus deceived, and knows less of Russia than many of his humblest subjects; and official and organised falsehoods are propagated from the lowest to the highest functionaries. What must they be by the time they arrive at the highest functionary of all? A governor-general lately carried his contempt of the law so far as to publicly marry his daughter, although she was already provided with a

* La Vérité sur la Russie. Par le Prince Pierre Dolgoroukow. Paris: A. Franck.

June-VOL. CXIX. NO. CCCCLXXIV.

husband. The emperor only heard of the circumstance accidentally, and even then the governor's influence was so great that he sent off the newly-married couple, not furtively, but comfortably, and even ostentatiously, by the high roads of the empire. "Russian administration," the prince," is an organised venality reposing upon a state of permanent anarchy, concealed from the eyes of the emperor and of Europe by the veil of official falsehood."

says

Even justice, we are told by the cynical prince, does not exist in Russia. To obtain justice, if one is an honest man, or to commit an act of injustice for selfish purposes, bribery is of first necessity. Only it is of no use bribing the wrong person.

A stranger, established at St. Petersburg, wished to obtain a situation as contractor. He applied to the chargé d'affaires of his own country, a person bigh in esteem and of great intelligence, and asked his support. The chargé d'affaires explained that diplomatists could not be responsible for contractors, but, he added, he ought to be aware as to how these things are managed in Russia: that he must give money to Count So-and-so, and make presents to the mistress of the count's father; that the latter being the head of the department he sought to supply, his success would then be certain. "Alas, sir!" said the merchant, in reply, "I have already given so much to the count, and so much to the mistress of the count's father; they took my money, made me promises, and have done nothing."

In Russia, justice is written and secret. There are no public courts, no open trials, and, consequently, no advocates or barristers. In 1835, his Royal Highness Prince Peter of Oldenbourg founded a school of jurisprudence at his own private expense; the pupils are, however, still in a minority at the ministry of justice. The present minister of justice said to Prince Dolgoroukow that it would be dangerous to admit counsel to plead at the bar in Russia, as it might tend to spread the knowledge of the laws beyond the circle of public functionaries! Yet are the public supposed to know the law, and to be amenable to it. This same minister abrogates the rights of the emperor himself; proscribes foreign travel, except after a certain number of years' service; orders the superiors to watch the private life of their inferiors, and even forbids their having recourse to law to defend their rights without his sanction.

The military, or exceptional jurisdictions, are amongst the most intolerable evils connected with the administration of the law in Russia. An example will best explain the working of this system. It occurred in 1856:

A landed proprietor in the province of Nijni, Mr. R., informed his serfs that being in want of money he was under the necessity of selling them. The peasants made him a present of a considerable sum of money, upon the condition that they should not be sold. The miserable man took the money, and sold his land and serfs to M. P. When the latter came to take possession of his newly-acquired property, the peasants refused to obey him, affirming, with reason and justice, that they had paid not to be sold. Government despatched a young aide-de-camp of the emperor's to the spot, but he, instead of limiting his functions to an inquiry, as was his duty, and wishing to conciliate M. P., whose son-in-law is one of the most important functionaries of the political police, had the impudence to prescribe to the government and council of regency of the province of Nijni to exile to Siberia such among the peasantry as he designated by name. Luckily for them, and for the province of Nijni, the governor happened to be, very exceptionally, a man as well known as he was

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