Still there is not a vestige of a smile on his face. He does not look at me as he speaks; his eyes are on the long, dead knots of the colorless gra.s.s at his feet; in his expression despondency and preoccupation strive for supremacy.

"Have you made your head ache?" I say, gently stealing my hand into his; "there is nothing that addles the brains like muddling over accounts, is there?"

_Am_ I awake? _Can_ I believe it? He has dropped my hand, as if he disliked the touch of it.

"No, thanks, no. I have no headache," he answers, hastily.

Another little silence. We are marching quickly along, as if our great object were to get our _tete-a-tete_ over. As we came, we dawdled, stood still to listen to the lark, to look at the wool-soft cloud-heaps piled in the west--on any trivial excuse indeed; but now all these things are changed.

"Did you talk of business _all_ the time?" I ask, by-and-by, with timid curiosity.

It is _not_ my fancy; he does plainly hesitate.

"Not quite _all_," he answers, in a low voice, and still looking away from me.

"About _what_, then?" I persist, in a voice through whose counterfeit playfulness I myself too plainly hear the unconquerable tremulousness; "may not I hear?--or is it a secret?"

He does not answer; it seems to me that he is considering what response to make.

"Perhaps," say I, still with a poor a.s.sumption of lightness and gayety, "perhaps you were talking of--of old times."

He laughs a little, but _whose_ laugh has he borrowed? in that dry, harsh tone there is nothing of my Roger's mellow mirth!

"Not we; old times must take care of themselves; one has enough to do with the new ones, I find."

"Did she--did she say any thing to you about--about _Algy_, then?"--hesitatingly.

"We did not mention his name."

There is something so abrupt and trenchant in his tone that I have not the spirit to pursue my inquiries any further. In deep astonishment and still deeper mortification, I pursue my way in silence.

Suddenly Roger comes to a stand-still.

"Nancy!" he says, in a voice that is more like his own, stopping and laying his hands on my shoulders; while in his eyes is something of his old kindness; yet not quite the old kindness either; there is more of unwilling, rueful yearning in them than there ever was in that--"Nancy, how old are you?--nineteen, is it not?"

"Very nearly twenty," reply I, cheerfully, for he has called me "Nancy,"

and I hail it as a sign of returning fine weather; "we may call it twenty; will not it be a comfort when I am well out of my teens?"

"And I am forty-eight," he says, as if speaking more to himself than to me, and sighing heavily; "it is a _monstrous_, an _unnatural_ disparity!"

"It is not nearly so bad as if it were _the other way_," reply I, laughing gayly; "I forty-eight, and _you_ twenty, is it?"

"My child! my child!"--speaking with an accent of, to me, unaccountable suffering--"what possessed me to _marry_ you? why did not I _adopt_ you instead? It would have been a hundred times more seemly!"

"It is a little late to think of that now, is not it?" I say, with an uncomfortable smile; then I go on, with an uneasy laugh, "that was the very idea that occurred to us the first night you arrived; at least, it never struck us as possible that you would take any notice of _me_, but we all said what a good thing it would be for the family if you would adopt Barbara or the Brat."

"Did you?" (very quickly, in a tone of keen pain); "it struck you all in the same light then?"

"But that was before we had seen you," I answer, hastily, repenting my confession as soon as I see its effects. "When we _had_, we soon changed our tune."

"_If_ I _had_ adopted you," he pursues, still looking at me with the same painful and intent wistfulness, "if I had been your father, you would have been fond of me, would not you? Not _afraid_ of me--not afraid to tell me any thing that most nearly concerned you--you would perhaps"--(with a difficult smile)--"you would perhaps have made me your _confidant_, would you, Nancy?"

I look up at him in utter bewilderment.

"What are you talking about? Why do I want a confidant? What have I to confide? What have I to tell any one?"

Our eyes are resting on each other, and, as I speak, I feel his go with clean and piercing search right through mine into my soul. In a moment I think of Musgrave, and the untold black tale now forever in my thought attached to him, and, as I so think, the hot flush of agonized shame that the recollection of him never fails to call to my face, invades cheeks, brow, and throat. To hide it, I drop my head on Roger's breast.

Shall I tell him _now_, this instant? Is it possible that he has already some faint and shadowy suspicion of the truth--some vague conjecture concerning it, as something in his manner seems to say? But no! it is absolutely impossible! Who, with the best will in the world, could have told him? Is not the tale safely buried in the deep grave of Musgrave's and my two hearts?

I raise my head, and twice essay to speak. Twice I stop, choked. How can I put into words the insult I have received? How can I reveal to him the slack levity, the careless looseness, with which I have kept the honor confided to me?

As my eyes stray helplessly round in a vain search for advice or help from the infinite unfeeling apathy of Nature, I catch sight of the distant chimneys of the abbey! How near it is! After all, why should I sow dissension between such close neighbors? why make an irreparable breach between two families, hitherto united by the kindly ties of mutual friendship and good-will?

Frank is young, very young; he has been--so Roger himself told me--very ill brought up. Perhaps he has already repented, who knows? I try to persuade myself that these are the reasons--and sufficient reasons--of my silence, and I take my resolution afresh. I will be dumb. The flush slowly dies out of my face, and, when I think it is almost gone, I venture to look again at Roger. I think that his eyes have never left me. They seem to be expecting me to speak, but, as I still remain silent, he turns at length away, and also gently removes his hands from my shoulders. We stand apart.

"Well, Nancy," he says, sighing again, as if from the bottom of his soul, "my poor child, it is no use talking about it. I can never be your father now."

"And a very good thing too!" rejoin I, with a dogged stoutness. "I do not see what I want with _two_ fathers; I have always found _one_ amply enough--quite as much as I could manage, in fact."

He seems hardly to be listening to me. He has dropped his eyes on the ground, and is speaking more to himself than to me.

"Husband and wife we are!" he says, with a slow depression of tone, "and, as long as G.o.d's and man's laws stand, husband and wife we must remain!"

"You are not very polite," I cry, with an indignant lump rising in my throat; "you speak as if you were _sorry_ for it--_are_ you?"

He lifts his eyes again, and again their keen search investigates the depths of my soul; but no human eye can rightly read the secrets of any other human spirit; they find what they expect to find, not what is there. Clear and cuttingly keen as they are, Roger's eyes do not read my soul aright.

"Are _you_, Nancy?"

"If _you_ are, I am," I reply, with a half-smothered sob.

He makes no rejoinder, and we begin again to walk along homeward, but slowly this time.

"We have made a mistake, perhaps," he says, presently, still speaking with the same slow and ruminating sadness in his tone. "The inscrutable G.o.d alone knows why He permits his creatures to mar all their seventy years by one short false step--yes--a _mistake_!"

(Ah me! ah me! I always mistrusted those laurestines! They sent me back my brother churlish and embittered, but oh! that in my steadfast Roger they should have worked such a sudden deadly change!)

"Is it more a mistake," I cry, bursting out into irrepressible anger, "than it was two hours ago, when I left you at that gate? You did not seem to think it a mistake _then_--at least you hid it very well, if you did"--(then going on quickly, seeing that he is about to interrupt me)--"have you been _comparing notes_, pray? Has _she_ found it a mistake, too?"

"Yes, _that_ she has! Poor soul! G.o.d help her!" he answers, compa.s.sionately.

Something in the pity of his tone jars frightfully on my strung nerves.

"If G.o.d has to help all the poor souls who have made mistakes, He will have his hands full!" I retort, bitterly.

Another silence. We are drawing near the pleasure-grounds--the great rhododendron belt that shelters the shrubbery from the east wind.

"Nancy," says Roger, again stopping, and facing me too. This time he does not put his hands on my shoulders; the melancholy is still in his eyes, but there is no longer any harshness. They repossess their natural kindly benignity. "Though it is perhaps impossible that there should be between us that pa.s.sionate love that there might be between people that are nearer each other in age--more fitly mated--yet there is no reason why we should not _like_ each other very heartily, is there, dear? why there should not be between us absolute confidence, perfect frankness--that is the great thing, is not it?"