ected
you of drawing the long bow--_now_ I am sure of it! As it happens, I
have just come from Mrs. Huntley, and she knew no more about it than the
babe unborn!"

I am looking him full in the face, but, to my surprise, I cannot detect
the expression of confusion and defeat which I anticipate. There is only
the old white-anger look that I have such a happy knack of calling up on
his features.

"I _am_ a consummate liar!" he says, quietly, though his eyes flash.
"Every one knows _that_; but, all the same, she _did_ tell me."

"I do not believe a word of it!" cry I, in a fury.

He makes no answer, but, lifting his hat, begins to walk quickly away.
For a hundred yards I allow him to go unrecalled; then, as I note his
quickly-diminishing figure and the heavy mists beginning to fold him, my
resolution fails me; I take to my heels and scamper after him.

"Stop!" say I, panting as I come up with him, "I dare say--perhaps--you
_thought_ you were speaking truth!--there must, must be some _mistake_!"

He does not answer, but still walks quickly on.

"Tell me!" cry I, posting on alongside of him, breathless and
distressed--"when was it? where did you hear it? how long ago?"

"I never heard it?"

"Yes, you did," cry I, passionately, asseverating what I have so lately
and passionately denied. "You know you did; but when was it? how was it?
where was it?"

"It was _nowhere_," he answers with a cold, angry smile. "I was _drawing
the long bow_!"

I stop in baffled rage and misery. I stand stock-still, with the long,
dying grass wetly and limply clasping my ankles. To my surprise he stops
too.

"I wish you were _dead_!" I say tersely, and it is not a figure of
speech. For the moment I do honestly wish it.

"Do you?" he answers, throwing me back a look of hardly inferior
animosity; "I dare say I do not much mind." A little pause, during which
we eye each other, like two fighting-cocks. "Even if I _were_ dead," he
says, in a low voice--"mind, I do not blame you for wishing
it--sometimes I wish it myself--but even if I _were_, I do not see how
that would hinder Sir Roger and Mrs. Huntley from corresponding."

"They _do not_ correspond," cry I, violently; "it is a falsehood!" Then,
with a quick change of thought and tone: "But if they do, I--I--do not
mind! I--I--am very glad--if Roger likes it! There is no harm in it."

"Not the slightest."

"Do you _always_ stay at home?" cry I, in a fury, goaded out of all
politeness