thing in my reach, and leave the subject
alone--"but untrue stories are often amusing, more amusing than the true
ones. You may tell yours, if you like."

"I have not the slightest wish."

A few steps more. How quickly we are getting through the park! We shall
reach the church, and I shall not have heard. I shall sit and stand and
kneel all through the service with the pain of that gnawing
curiosity--that hateful new vague jealousy aching at my heart.

It is _impossible_! I stop. I stand stock-still in the summer grass.

"I _hate_ your hints! I hate your innuendoes!" I say, passionately. "I
have always lived with people who spoke their thoughts straight out!
Tell me this moment! I will not move a step from this spot till you do."

"I have nothing worth speaking of to tell," he answers, slightly. "It is
only that never having had a wife myself, I have taken an outsider's
view; I have taken it for granted that when two people marry each other
they make a clean breast of their past history--make a mutual confession
of their former--"

He pauses, as if in search of a word.

"But supposing," cry I, eagerly, "that they have nothing to tell,
nothing to confess--"

He shrugs his shoulders.

"That is so likely, is it not?"

"Likely or not," cry I, excitedly, "it was true in _my_ case. If you had
put me on the rack, I could have confessed nothing!"

"I do not see the analogy," he answers, coldly; "_you_ are--what did you
tell me? nineteen?--It is to be supposed"--(with a rather unlovely
smile)--"that your history is yet to come; and he is--_forty-seven_! We
shall be late for church!"--with a glance at Algy's and Barbara's
quickly diminishing figures.

"I do not care whether we are late or not!" cry I, vehemently, and
stamping on the daisy-heads as I speak. "I will not _stir_ until you
tell me."

"There is really no need for such excitement!" returns he with a cold
smile; "since you will have it, it is only that rumor--and you know what
a liar _rumor_ is--says that once, some years ago, they were engaged to
marry each other."

"And why did not they?" speaking with breathless panting, and forgetting
my stout asseveration that the whole tale is a lie.

"Because--mind, I _vouch_ for nothing, I am only quoting rumor
again--because--she threw him over."

"_Threw him over!_" with an accent of most unfeigned astonishment.

"You are surprised!" he says, quickly, and with what sounds to me like a
slightly annoyed infl