"Are you so sure she _is_ lonely?" I say, with an innocent air of asking for information, and still working hard at the b.u.t.ton; "are people always lonely when their husbands are away?"

He looks at me strangely for a moment; then, "Of course she is lonely, poor little thing!" he says, warmly; "how could she help it?"

A slight pause.

"_Most_ men," say I, jealously, "would not have thought it a hardship to walk up and down between the laurustinus with Mrs. Zephine, I can tell you!"

"Would not they?" he answers, indifferently. "I dare say not! she always _was_ a good little thing!"

"Excellent!" reply I, with a nasty dryness, "bland, pa.s.sionate, and deeply religious!"

Again he looks at me in surprise--a surprise which, after a moment's reflection, melts and brightens into an expression of pleasure.

"Did you care so much about my coming that ten minutes seemed to make a difference?" he asks, in an eager voice. "Is it possible that you were _in a hurry_ for me?"

Why cannot I speak truth, and say yes? Why does an objectlessly lying devil make its inopportune entry into me? Through some misplaced and crooked false shame I answer, "Not at all! not at all! of course a few minutes one way or the other could not make much difference; I was only puzzled to know what had become of you?"

He looks a shade disappointed, and for a moment we are both silent. We have sat down side by side on the sofa. Vick is standing on her hinder legs, with her forepaws rested on Roger's knee. Her tail is wagging with the strong and untiring regularity of a pendulum, and a smirk of welcome and recognition is on her face. Roger's arm is round me, and we are holding each other's hands, but we are no longer in heaven. I could not tell you _why_, but we are not. Some stupid constraint--quite of earth--has fallen upon me. Where are all those most tender words, those profuse endearments with which I meant to have greeted him?

"And so it is actually true!" he says, with a long-drawn sigh of relief; his eyes wandering round the room, and taking in all the familiar objects; "there is no mistake about it! I am actually holding your real live hand" (turning it gently about and softly considering the long slight fingers and pink palm)--"in mine! Ah! my dear, how often, how often I have held it so in my dreams! Have you ever" (speaking with a sort of doubtfulness and uncertain hope)--"have you ever--no, I dare say not--so held mine?"

The diffident pa.s.sion in his voice for once destroys that vile constraint, dissipates that idiotic sense of bashfulness.

"_Scores_ of times!" I answer, letting my head drop on his shoulder, and not taking the trouble to raise it again.

"I never _used_ to think myself of a very nervous turn!" he says, presently, with a smile. "Nancy, you will laugh at me, but I a.s.sure you upon my honor that all the way home I have been in the most abject and deadly fright: at every puff of wind I thought we were infallibly going to the bottom: whenever the carriage rocked in the least to-day on the way down, I made up my mind we were going to smash! Little woman, what can a bit of a thing like you have done to me to make me seem so much more valuable to myself than I have ever done these eight-and-forty years?"

I think no answer to this so suitable and seemly as a dumb friction of my left cheek against the rough cloth of the shoulder on which it has reposed itself.

"Talk to me, Nancy!" he says, in a quiet half-whisper of happiness. "Let me hear the sound of your voice! I am sick of my own; I have had a glut of that all these weary eight months; tell me about them all! How are they all? how are the boys?" (with a playful smile of recollection at what used to be my _one_ subject, the one theme on which I was wont to wax illimitably diffuse). But now, at the magic name no pleasant garrulity overcomes me; only the remembrance of my worries; of all those troubles that I mean now to transfer from my own to Roger's broad shoulders, swoop down upon me.

I raise my head and speak with a clouded brow and a complaining tone.

"The Brat has gone back to Oxford," I say, gloomily; "Bobby has gone to Hong-Kong, and Algy has gone to _the dogs_--or at least is going there as hard as he can!"

"_To the dogs?_" (with an accent of surprise and concern); "what do you mean? what has sent him there?"

"You had better ask Mrs. Zephine," reply I, bitterly, thinking, with a lively exasperation, of the changed and demoralized Algy I had last seen--soured, headstrong, and unhinged.

"_Zephine!_" (repeating the name with an accent of thorough astonishment), "what on earth can _she_ have to say to it?"

"Ah, _what_?" reply I, with oracular spite; then, overcome with remorse at the thought of the way in which I was embittering the first moments of his return, I rebury my face in his shoulder.

"I will tell you about that to-morrow," I say; "to-day is a good day, and we will talk only of good things and of good people."

He does not immediately answer. My remark seems to have buried him in thought. Presently he shakes off his distraction and speaks again.

"And Barbara? how is she? _She_ has not" (beginning to laugh)--"_she_ has not gone to the dogs, I suppose!"

"No," say I, slowly, not thinking of what I am saying, but with my thoughts wandering off to the greatest and sorest of my afflictions, "not yet."

"And" (smiling) "your plan. See what a good memory I have--your plan of marrying her to Musgrave, how does that work?"

"_My_ plan!" cry I, tremulously, while a sudden torrent of scarlet pours all over my face and neck. "I do not know what you are talking about! I never had any such plan! Phew!" (lifting up the arm that is round my waist, hastily removing it, rising and going to the window), "how hot this room grows of an afternoon!"

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

So the king enjoys his own again, and Roger is at home. Not yet--and now it is the next morning--has his return become _real_ to me. Still there is something phantom and visionary about it: still it seems to me open to question whether, if I look away from him for a moment, he may not melt and disappear into dream-land.

All through breakfast I am dodging and peeping from behind the urn to a.s.sure myself of the continued presence and substantial reality of the strong shoulders and bronze-colored face that so solidly and certainly face me. As often as I catch his eye--and this is not seldom, for perhaps he too has his misgivings about me--I smile, in a manner, half ashamed, half sneaky, and yet most wholly satisfied.

The sun, who is not by any means _always_ so well-judging, often hiding his face with both hands from a wedding, and hotly and gaudily flaming down on a black funeral, is shining with a temperate February comeliness in at our windows, on our garden borders; trying (and failing) to warm up the pa.s.sionless melancholy of the chilly snow-drop families, trying (and succeeding) to add his quota to the joy that already fills and occupies our two hearts.

"How fine it is!" I cry, flying with unmatronly agility to the window, and playing a waltz on the pane. "That is right! I should have been so angry if it had rained; let us come out at once--I want to hear your opinion about the laurels; they want cutting badly, but I could not have them touched while you were away, though Bobby's fingers--when he was here--itched to be hacking at them. Come, I have got on my strong boots on purpose!--_at once_."

"_At once?_" he repeats, a little doubtfully turning over the letters that lie in a heap beside his plate. "Well, I do not know about _that_--duty first, and pleasure afterward. Had not I better go to Zephine Huntley's _first_, and get it over?"

"To _Zephine Huntley's_?" repeat I, my fingers suddenly breaking off in the middle of their tune, as I turn quickly round to face him; the smile disappearing from my face, and my jaw lengthening; "you do not mean to say that you are going there _again_?"

"Yes, _again_!" he answers, laughing a little, and slightly mimicking my tragic tone; "why not, Nancy?"

I make no answer. I turn away and look out; but I see a different landscape. It looks to me as if I were regarding it through dark-blue gla.s.s.

"I have got a whole sheaf of letters and papers from her husband for her," pursues Roger, apparently calmly, and utterly unaware of my discomfiture, "and I do not want to keep her out of them longer than I can help."

Still I make no rejoinder. My fingers stray idly up and down the gla.s.s; but it is no longer a giddy waltz that they are executing--if it is a tune at all, it is some little dirge.

"What has happened to you, Nancy?" says Roger, presently, becoming aware of my silence, rising and following me; "what are you doing--catching flies?"

"No," reply I, with an acrid smartness, "not I! I leave that to Mrs.

Zephine."

Once again he regards me with that look of unfeigned surprise, tinged with a little pain which yesterday I detected on his face. When I look at him, when my eyes rest on the brave and open honesty of his, my ugly, nipping doubts disappear.

"Do not go," say I, standing on tiptoe, so that my hands may reach his neck, and clasp it, speaking in my most beguiling half-whisper; "why should you fetch and carry for her? let John or William take her letters. Are you so sure" (with an irresistible sneer) "that she is in such a hurry for them?--stay with me this _one first_ day!--_do, please--Roger._"

It is the first time in all my history that I have succeeded in delivering myself of his Christian name to his face--frequently as I have fired it off in dialogues with myself, behind his back. It shoots out now with the loud suddenness of a mismanaged soda-water cork.

"_Roger!_" he repeats, in an accent of keen pleasure, catching me to his heart; "what! I am _Roger_, after all, am I? The 'general' has gone to glory at last, has he?--thank G.o.d!"

"I will ring and tell John at once," say I, with subtile amiability, disengaging myself from his arms, and walking quickly toward the bell.

"Stay!" he says, putting his hand on me in detention, before I have made two steps; "you must not! it is no use! John will not do, or William either: it is a matter of business. I have" (sighing) "to go through many of these papers with her."

"_You?_"