too.

"Dear Groosegarten!" cry I, thinking of the long pottering stroll that
Roger and I had taken one evening up and down its green alleys, and that
_then_ I had found so tedious.

"Dear Zwinger!" retorts Frank.

"Dear Weisserhirsch!" say I, half sadly. "Dear white acacias! dear
drives under the acacias!"

"_Drives under the acacias!_" echoes Frank, dropping his accent of
sentimentalism, and speaking rather sharply. "We never had any drives
under the acacias! We never had any drives at all, that I recollect!"

"_You_ had not, I dare say," reply I, carelessly, "but _we_ had. They
are the things that I look back at with the greatest pleasure of any
thing that happened there!"

Frank does not apostrophize as "_dear_" any other public resort; indeed,
he turns away his head, and we walk on without uttering a word for a few
moments.

"By-the-by," say I, with a labored and not altogether successful attempt
at appearing to speak with suddenness and want of premeditation, "what
did you mean this morning, about that la--about Mrs. Huntley?"

"I meant nothing," he answers, but the faint quiver of a smile about his
mouth contradicts his words.

"That is not true!" reply I, with impatient brusqueness; "why were you
surprised at my not having heard of her?"

"I was not surprised."

"What is the use of so many falsehoods?" cry I, indignantly; "at least I
would choose some better time than when I was going to church for
telling them. What reason have you for supposing that--that Roger knows
more about her than I--than Barbara do?"

"How persistent you are!" he says, with that same peculiar smile--not
latent now, but developed--curbing his lips and lightening in his eyes.
"There is no baffling you! Since you dislike falsehoods, I will tell you
no more. I will own to you that I made a slip of the tongue; I took it
for granted that you had been told a certain little history, which it
seems you have _not_ been told."

The blood rushes headlong to my face. It feels as if every drop in my
body were throbbing and tingling in my cheeks, but I look back at him
hardily.

"I don't believe there _is_ any such history."

"I dare say not."

More silence. Swish through the buttercups and the yellow rattle; a
lark, miles above our heads, singing the music he has overheard in
heaven. Frank does not seem inclined to speak again.

"Your story is _not_ true," say I, presently, laughing uncomfortably,
and unable to do the one wise