He is looking with such intense wistfulness at me, that I turn away. Why should not there be pa.s.sionate love between us? Who is there but himself to hinder it? So I make no answer.

"I dare say," he says, taking my right hand, and holding it with a cool and kindly clasp, "that you think it difficult--next door to impossible--for two people, one at the outset, one almost on the confines of life, to enter very understandingly into each other's interests! No doubt the thought that I--being so much ahead of you in years"--(sighing again heavily)--"cannot see with your eyes, or look at things from your stand-point--would make it harder for you to come to me in your troubles; but indeed, dear, if you believe me, I will _try_, and, as we are to spend our lives together, I think it would be better, would not it?"

He speaks with a deprecating humility, an almost imploring gentleness, but I am so thoroughly upset by the astounding change that has come over the tone of his talk--by the clouds that have suddenly darkened the morning sunshine of my horizon--that I cannot answer him in the same tone.

"Perhaps we shall not have to spend all our lives together!" I say, with a harsh laugh. "Cheer up! One of us may _die_! who knows?"

After that we neither of us say any thing till we reach the house.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

"Yea, by G.o.d's rood, I trusted you too well!"

In the hall we part without a word, and I, spiritlessly, mount the staircase alone. How I flew down it this morning, three steps at a time, and had some ado to hinder myself from sliding down the banisters, as we have all often, with dangerous joy, done at home! Now I crawl up, like some sickly old person. When I reach my bedroom, I throw myself into the first chair, and lie in it--

"... quiet as any water-sodden log Stayed in the wandering warble of a brook."

I do not attempt to take off my hat and jacket. Of what use is it to take them off more than to leave them on, or to leave them on more than to take them off? Of what use is _any thing_, pray? What a weary round life is! what a silly circle of unfortunate repet.i.tions! eating only to be hungry again; waking only to sleep; sleeping only to wake!

At first I am too inert even to think, even to lift my hand to protect my cheek from Vick's muddy paws, who, annoyed at my evident inattention to her presence, is sitting on my lap, making little impatient _clawings_ at my defenseless countenance. But gradually on the river of recollection all the incidents of the morning flow through my mind. In more startling relief than ever, the astounding change in Roger, wrought by those ill-starred two hours, stands out. Is it possible that I may have been attributing it to a wrong cause? Doubtless, the first interview with the woman he had loved, and who had thrown him over (by-the-by, how forgiving men are!)--yes, the first, probably, since they had stood in the relation of betrothed people to each other--must have been full of pain. Doubtless, the contrast between the crude gawkiness of the raw girl he has drifted into marrying--for I suppose it was more accident than any thing else--with the mature and subtile grace, the fine and low-voiced sweetness of the woman whom his whole heart and soul and taste chose and approved, must have struck him with keen force. I expected _that_: it would not have taken me by surprise.

If he had emerged from among the laurestines, depressed, and vainly struggling for a fact.i.tious cheerfulness, I think I could have understood it. I think I could have borne with it, could have tried meekly to steal back into his heart again, to win him back, in despite of ignorance, gawkiness, and all other my drawbacks, by force of sheer love.

But the change was surely too abrupt to be accounted for on this hypothesis. Would _Roger_, my pattern of courtesy--Roger, who shrinks from hurting the meanest beggar's feelings--would he, in such plain terms, have deplored and wished undone our marriage, if it were only suffering to _himself_ that it had entailed? Has his unselfish chivalry gone the way of Algy's brotherly love? Impossible! the more I think of it, the more unlikely it seems--the more certain it appears to me that I must look elsewhere for the cause of the alteration that has so heavily darkened my day.

I have risen, and am walking quickly up and down. I have shaken off my stolid apathy, or, rather, it has fallen off of itself. Can she have told him any ill tales of me? any thing to my disadvantage? Instantly the thought of Musgrave--the black and heavy thought that is never far from the portals of my mind--darts across me, and, at the same instant, like a flash of lightning, the recollection of my meeting her on the fatal evening, just as (with tear-stained, swollen face) I had parted from Frank--of the alert and lively interest in her eyes, as she bowed and smiled to me, flames with sudden illumination into my soul. Still I can hardly credit it. It would, no doubt, be pleasant to her to sow dissension between us, but would even _she_ dare to carry ill tales of a wife to a husband? And even supposing that she had, would he attach so much importance to my being seen with wet cheeks? I, who cry so easily--I, who wept myself nearly blind when Jacky caught his leg in the snare? If he thinks so much of that part of the tale, _what would he think of the rest_?

As I make this reflection I shudder, and again congratulate myself on my silence. For beyond our parting, and my tears, it is _impossible_ that she can have told him aught.

Men are not p.r.o.ne to publish their own discomfitures; even _I_ know that much. I exonerate Mr. Musgrave from all share in making it known--and have the mossed tree-trunks lips? or the loud brook an articulate tongue? Thank G.o.d! thank G.o.d! _no!_ Nature never blabs. With infinite composure, with a most calm smile she _listens_, but she never tells again.

A little rea.s.sured by this thought, I resolve to remain in doubt no longer than I can help, but to ascertain, if necessary, by direct inquiry, whether my suspicions are correct. This determination is no sooner come to than it puts fresh life and energy into my limbs. I take off my hat and jacket, smooth my hair, and prepare with some alacrity for luncheon.

It is evening, however, before I have an opportunity of putting my resolve in practice. At luncheon, there are the servants; all afternoon, Roger is closeted with his agent: before we set off this morning, he never mentioned the agent: he never figured at all in our day's plan--(I imagined that he was to be kept till to-morrow); and at dinner there are the servants again. Thank G.o.d, they are gone now! We are alone, Roger and I. We are sitting in my boudoir, as in my day-dreams, before his return, I had pictured us; but, alas! where is caressing proximity which figured in all my visions? where is the stool on which I was to sit at his feet, with head confidently leaned on his arm? As it happens, Vick is sitting on the stool, and we occupy two arm-chairs, at civil distance from each other, much as if we had been married sixty years, and had hated each other for fifty-nine of them. I am idly fiddle-faddling with a piece of work, and Roger--is it possible?--is stretching out his hand toward a book.

"You do not mean to say that you are going to _read_?" I say, in a tone of sharp vexation.

He lays it down again.

"If you had rather talk, I will not."

"I am afraid," say I, with a sour laugh, "that you have not kept much conversation _for home use_! I suppose you exhausted it all, this morning, at Laurel Cottage!"

He pa.s.ses his hand slowly across his forehead.

"Perhaps!--I do not think I am in a very talking vein."

"By-the-by," say I, my heart beating thick, and with a hurry and tremor in my voice, as I approach the desired yet dreaded theme, "you have never told me what it was, besides Mr. Huntley's debts, that you talked of this morning!--you owned that you did not talk of business _quite_ all the time!"

"Did I?"

He has forgotten his book now; across the flame of the candles, he is looking full and steadily at me.

"When I asked you, you said it was not about old times?--of course--" (laughing acridly)--"I can imagine your becoming illimitably diffuse about _them_, but you told me, that, 'No,' you did not mention them."

"I told truth."

"You also said," continue I, with my voice still trembling, and my pulses throbbing, "that it was not _Algy_ that you were discussing!--if _I_ had been in your place, I could, perhaps, have found a good deal to say about _him_; but you told me that you never mentioned him."

"We did not."

"Then what _did_ you talk about?" I ask, in strong excitement; "it must have been a very odd theme that you find such difficulty in repeating."

Still he is looking, with searching gravity, full in my face.

"Do you _really_ wish to know?"

I cannot meet his eyes: something in me makes me quail before them. I turn mine away, but answer, stoutly:

"Yes, I _do_ wish. Why should I have asked, if I did not?"

Still he says nothing: still I feel, though I am not looking at him, that his eyes are upon me.

"Was it--" say I, unable any longer to bear that dumb gaze, and preferring to take the bull by the horns, and rush on my fate--"was it any thing about _me_? has she been telling you any tales of--of--_me_?"

No answer! No sound but the clock, and Vick's heavy breathing, as she peacefully snores on the footstool. I _cannot_ bear the suspense. Again I lift my eyes, and look at him. Yes, I am right! the intense anxiety--the overpowering emotion on his face tell me that I have touched the right string.

"Are there--are there--are you aware that there are any tales that she _could_ tell of you?"

Again I laugh harshly.

"Ha! ha! if we came to mutual anecdotes, I am not quite sure that I might not have the best of it!"

"That is not the question," he replies, in a voice so exceedingly stern, so absolutely different from any thing I have ever hitherto contemplated as possible in my gentle, genial Roger, that again, to the depths of my soul, I quail; how could I ever, in wildest dreams, have thought I should dare to tell him?--"it is nothing to me what tales _you_ can tell of _her_!--_she_ is not my wife!--what I wish to know--what I _will_ know, is, whether there is any thing that she _could_ say of you!"

For a moment, I do not answer. I cannot. A coward fear is grasping my heart with its clammy hands. Then--

"_Could!_" say I, shrugging my shoulders, and feebly trying to laugh derisively; "of course she could! it would be difficult to set a limit to the powers of a lady of her imagination!"

"What do you mean?" he cries, quickly, and with what sounds like a sort of hope in his voice; "have you any reason--any grounds for thinking her inventive?"

I do not answer directly.

"It is true, then," I cry, with flashing eyes, and in a voice of great and indignant anguish. "I have not been mistaken! I was right! Is it possible that _you_, who, only this morning, warned me with such severity against backbiting, have been calmly listening to scandalous tales about me from a stranger?"