CHAPTER XXV.

One more day is gone. We are one day nearer Roger's return. This is the way in which I am growing to look at the flight of time; just as, in Dresden, I joyfully marked each sunset, as bringing me twenty-four hours nearer home and the boys. And now the boys are within reach; at a wish I could have them all round me; and still, in my thoughts, I hurry the slow days, and blame them for dawdling. With all their broad, gold sunshine, and their rainbow-colored flowers, I wish them away.

Alas! that life should be both so quick and so lagging! It is afternoon, and I am lying by myself on a cloak at the bottom of the punt--the _unupsettable_, broad-bottomed punt. My elbow rests on the seat, and a book is on my lap. But, in the middle of the pool, the glare from the water is unbearably bright, but _here_, underneath those dipping, drooped trees, the sun only filters through in little flakes, and the shade is brown, and the reflections are so vivid that the flags hardly know which are themselves--they, or the other flags that grow in the water at their feet.

A while ago I tried to read; but a private vexation of my own--a small new one--interleaved with its details each page of the story, and made nonsense of it. I have shut the volume, therefore, and, with my hat tilted over my eyes, and my cheek on my hand, am watching the long blue dragon-flies, and the numberless small peoples that inhabit the summer air. All at once, I hear some one coming, crashing and pushing through the woody undergrowth. Perhaps it is Algy come to say that he has changed his mind, and that he will not go after all! No! it is only Mr.

Musgrave. I am a little disappointed, but, as my fondness for my own company is always of the smallest, I am able to smile a sincere welcome.

"It is you, is it?" I say, with a little intimate nod. "How did you know where I was?"

"Barbara told me."

"_Barbara_, indeed!" (laughing). "I wish father could hear you."

"I am very glad he does not."

"And so you found her at home?" I say, with a feeling of pleased curiosity, as to the details of the interview. (He cannot well have volunteered the abbey _already_, can he?)

"I suppose I may come in," he says, hardly waiting my permission to jump into the punt, which, however, by reason of the n.o.ble broadness of its bottom, is enabled to bid defiance to any such shock. "She was making a flannel petticoat for an old woman," he goes on, sitting down opposite me, and looking at me from under his hat-brim, with gravely shining eyes; "_herring-boning_, she called it. She has been teaching me how to herring-bone. I like Barbara."

"How kind of you!" I say, ironically, and yet a little gratified too.

"And does she return the compliment, may I ask?"

He nods.

"Yes, I think so."

"She would like you better still if you were to lose all your money, and one of your legs, and be marked by the small-pox," I say, thoughtfully; "to be despised, and out at elbows, and down in the world, is the sure way to Barbara's heart."

I had meant to have drawn for him a pleasant and yet most true picture of her sweet disinterestedness, but his uneasy vanity takes it amiss.

"As it entails being enrolled among the blind and lame," he says, smiling sarcastically, and flushing a little, "I am afraid I shall never get there."

A moment ago I had felt hardly less than sisterly toward him. Now I look at him with a disgustful and disapprobative eye. What a very great deal of alteration he needs, and, with that face, and his abbey, and all his rooks to back it, how very unlikely he is to get it! Well, _I_ at least will do my best!

We both remain quiet for a few moments. Vick sits at the end of the punt, a shiver of excitement running all over her little white body, her black nose quivering, and one lip slightly lifted by a tooth, as she gazes with eager gravity at the distant wild-ducks flying along in a row, with outstretched necks, making their pleasant quacks. How low they fly; so low that their feet splash in the water, that makes a bright spray-hue in the sun!

"Algy is going away to-morrow!" say I, presently.

"So he told me."

"This is his last evening here!" (in a rather dolorous tone).

"So I should gather," laughing a little at the obviousness of my last piece of information.

"And yet," say I, looking down through the clear water at a dead tree-bough lying at the bottom, and sighing, "he is going to dine out to-night--to dine with Mrs. Huntley."

"With Mrs. Huntley! when?" with a long-drawn whistle of intelligence.

"Tell me," cry I, impulsively, raising myself from my reclining pose, and sitting upright, "you will understand better than I do--perhaps it is my mistake--but, if you had seen a person only _once_ for five or ten minutes, would you sign yourself 'Yours very sincerely' to them?"

He laughs dryly.

"Not unless I was writing _after dinner_--why?"

"Nothing--no reason!"

Again he laughs.

"I think I can guess."

"Her name is Zephine," say I again, leaning over the boat-side and pulling my forefinger slowly to and fro through the warm brown water.

"I am well aware of that fact" (smiling).

How near the swans are drawing toward us! One, with his neck well thrown back, and his wings raised and ruffled, sailing along like a lovely snow-white ship; another, with less grace and more homeliness, standing on his head, with black webs paddling out behind.

"You were quite wrong on Sunday--_quite_," say I, speaking with sudden abruptness, and reddening.

"On Sunday!" (throwing his luminous dark eyes upward to the light clouds and faint blue of the August sky above us, as if to aid his recollection), "nothing more likely--but what about?"

"About--Roger," I answer, speaking with some difficulty ("and Mrs.

Huntley," I was going to add, but some superst.i.tion hinders me from coupling their names even in a sentence).

"I dare say"--carelessly--"but what new light have you had thrown upon the matter?"

"I asked her," I say, looking him full in the face, with simple directness.

"_Asked her!_" repeats he, with an accent of profound astonishment.

"Asked the woman whether she had been engaged to him, and jilted him?

Impossible!"

"No! no!" cry I, with tremulous impatience, "of course not; but I asked her whether she used not to know him in India, and she said, 'Yes, we met several times,' just like _that_--she no more blushed and looked confused than _I_ should if any one asked me whether I knew you!"

He is still leaning over the punt, and has begun to dabble as I did.

"You certainly have a way of putting things very strongly," he says in a rather low voice, "_convincingly_ so!"

"She did not even know what part of the world he was in!" I cry, triumphantly.

"Did she say so?" (lifting up his face, and speaking quickly).

"Well, no--o--" I answer, reluctantly; "but I said, 'He is in the West Indies,' and she answered 'Yes,' or 'Indeed,' or 'Is he?' I forget which, but at any rate it implied that it was news to her."

A pike leaps not far from us, and splashes back again. I watch to see whether the widening faint circles will have strength to reach us, or whether the water's smile will be smoothed and straightened before it gets to us.

"Did Mrs. Huntley happen to say" (leaning lazily back, and speaking carelessly), "how she liked her house?"