"Foolish fellow! I wish he had not come!"

"I dare say he returns the compliment."

"I wish she would leave him alone!" he says, with an accent of impatience, more to himself than to me.

"That is so likely," say I, quickly, "so much her way, is not it?"

I suppose that something in the exceeding bitterness of my tone strikes him, for his eyes return from Algy to me.

"Nancy," he says, speaking with a sort of hesitating impulse, while a dark flush crosses his face, "it has occurred to me once or twice--if the idea had been less unspeakably absurd, it would have occurred to me many times--that you are--are _jealous_ of Zephine and me!--YOU jealous of ME!!"

There is such a depth of emphasis in his last words--such a wealth of reproachful appeal in the eyes that are bent on me--that I can answer nothing. I say neither yea nor nay. He has sat down on the couch beside me.

"Tell me," he says, with low, quick excitement--"and for G.o.d's sake do not grow scarlet, and turn your head aside as you mostly have done--did you, or did you not know that--that _Musgrave_ was to be here to-day?"

"I _did not_--_indeed_ I _did not_!" I cry, with pa.s.sionate eagerness; thankful for once to be able to tell the truth; "we none of us did--not even Barbara!"

He repeats my last words with a slightly sarcastic inflection, "_not even Barbara_!"

A moment's pause.

"Why did you stop talking so suddenly, the moment that we interrupted you?" he asks, with an abruptness that is almost harsh--"what were you talking about?"

Phew! how hot it is! even though one is by the open window!--even despite the cool moistness of the night wind.

"I was--I was--I was--congratulating him!" I say, doing the very thing he has forbidden me, reddening and turning half away. He makes no rejoinder; only I hear him sigh, and put his hand with a quick, impatient movement to his head.

"You believe me?" I ask, timidly, laying my hand on his arm.

"No, _I do not_!" he replies, shaking off my touch, and turning his stern and glittering eyes full upon me. "I should be a _fool_ and an _idiot_ if I did!"

Then he rises hastily and leaves me. I watch him as he joins the other men. They are _all_ round her now--all but Musgrave.

Algy has left his corner and his reversed picture-book, moved thereto by the unparalleled audacity of young Parker, who has pulled one of the sofa-cushions down on the floor, and is squatting on it, like a great toad at her feet, examining a gnat-bite on her sacred arm.

Even the old host is doing the agreeable according to his lights. In a very loud voice he is narrating a long anecdote about a pretty girl that he once saw at a windmill near Seville, during the Peninsular. With a most unholy chuckle he is trying to hint that there was more between him and the young lady than it well beseems him to tell; but fortunately no one, but I, is listening to him.

I turn away my head, and look out of the window up at Charles's Wain, and all my other bright old friends. No one is heeding me--no one sees me; so I drop my hot cheek on the sill.

Suddenly I start up. Some one is approaching me: some one has thrown himself with careless freedom on the couch beside me. It is Algy.

Having utterly failed in dislodging Mr. Parker from his cushion--having had a suggestion on his part, on the treatment of the gnat-bite, pa.s.sed over in silent contempt--he has retired from the circle in dudgeon.

"This is lively, is not it?" he says, in an aggressively loud voice, as if he were quarrelsomely anxious to be overheard.

I say "Hush!" apprehensively.

"As no one makes the slightest attempt to entertain _us_, we must entertain each other, I suppose!"

"Yes, dear old boy!" I say, affectionately, "why not?--it would not be the first time by many."

"That does not make it any the more amusing!" he says, harshly.--"I say, Nancy"--his eyes fixing themselves with sullen greediness on the central figure of the group he has left--on the slight round arm (after all, not half so round or so white as Barbara's or mine)--which is still under treatment, "_is_ eau de cologne good for those sort of bites?--her arm _is_ bad, you know!"

"_Bad!_" echo I, scornfully; "_bad!_ why, I am _all_ lumps, more or less, and so is Barbara! who minds _us_!"

"You ought to make your old man--'_auld Robin Gray_'--mind you," he says, with a disagreeable laugh. "It is _his_ business, but he does not seem to see it, does he? ha! ha!"

"I _wish_!" cry I, pa.s.sionately; then I stop myself. After all, he is hardly himself to-night, poor Algy!

"By-the-by," he says, presently, with a wretchedly a.s.sumed air of carelessness, "is it true--it is as well to come to the fountain-head at once--is it true that _once_, some time in the dark ages, he--he--thought fit to engage himself to, to _her_?" (with a fierce accent on the last word).

A pain runs through my heart. Well, that is nothing new nowadays. He too has heard it, then.

"I do not know!" I answer, faintly.

"What! he has not told you? _Kept it dark!_ eh?" (with the same hateful laugh).

"He has kept nothing dark!" I answer, indignantly. "One day he began to tell me something, and I stopped him! I would not hear; I did not want to hear, I believe; I am sure that they are--only--only--old friends."

"_Old friends!_" he echoes, with a smile, in comparison of which our host's satyr-leer seems pleasant and chaste. "_Old friends!_ you call yourself a woman of the world" (indeed I call myself nothing of the kind), "you call yourself a woman of the world, and believe _that_! They looked like _old friends_ at dinner to-day, did not they? A little less than kin, and more than kind! Ha! ha!"

CHAPTER XLIV.

Partridges are not General Parker's strong point, and the few he ever had his nephew has already shot. Roger must, therefore, for one day abstain from the turnip-ridges. To amuse us, however, and keep us all sociably together, and bridge the yawning gulf between breakfast and dinner, we are to be sent on an expedition. Not only an expedition, but a picnic. This is perhaps a little risky in such a climate as ours, and in a month so doubtfully hovering on the borders of winter as September; but the sun is shining, and we therefore make up our minds, contrary to all precedent, that he must necessarily go on shining.

Some ten miles away there is a spot whence one can see seven counties, not to speak of the sea, a mountain or two, and some other trifles; and thither Mr. Parker is kindly going to bowl us down on his coach.

A drive on a coach is always to me a most doubtful joy; the ascent, labor; the drive itself, long anxiety and peril; the descent, agony, and sometimes shame. However, that is neither here nor there. I am going. It is still half an hour till the time appointed for our departure, and I am sitting alone in my room when Roger enters.

"Nancy," he says, coming quickly toward me, "have you any idea what sort of a whip that boy is?"

"Not the slightest!" reply I, shortly.

I feel as hard as a flint to-day. Algy's words last night seem to have confirmed and given a solider reality to my worst fears. He has walked to the window and is looking out.

"Are you _nervous_?" say I, with a slightly sarcastic smile.

He does not appear to notice the sarcasm.

"Yes," he says, "that is just what I am. He is a mad sort of fellow, and a coach is not a thing to play tricks with!"

"No," say I, indifferently. It seems to me of infinitely little consequence whether we are upset or not.

"That is what I came to speak to you about!" he says, still looking out of the window.