eather; "we may call it
twenty; will not it be a comfort when I am well out of my teens?"

"And I am forty-eight," he says, as if speaking more to himself than to
me, and sighing heavily; "it is a _monstrous_, an _unnatural_
disparity!"

"It is not nearly so bad as if it were _the other way_," reply I,
laughing gayly; "I forty-eight, and _you_ twenty, is it?"

"My child! my child!"--speaking with an accent of, to me, unaccountable
suffering--"what possessed me to _marry_ you? why did not I _adopt_ you
instead? It would have been a hundred times more seemly!"

"It is a little late to think of that now, is not it?" I say, with an
uncomfortable smile; then I go on, with an uneasy laugh, "that was the
very idea that occurred to us the first night you arrived; at least, it
never struck us as possible that you would take any notice of _me_, but
we all said what a good thing it would be for the family if you would
adopt Barbara or the Brat."

"Did you?" (very quickly, in a tone of keen pain); "it struck you all in
the same light then?"

"But that was before we had seen you," I answer, hastily, repenting my
confession as soon as I see its effects. "When we _had_, we soon changed
our tune."

"_If_ I _had_ adopted you," he pursues, still looking at me with the
same painful and intent wistfulness, "if I had been your father, you
would have been fond of me, would not you? Not _afraid_ of me--not
afraid to tell me any thing that most nearly concerned you--you would
perhaps"--(with a difficult smile)--"you would perhaps have made me your
_confidant_, would you, Nancy?"

I look up at him in utter bewilderment.

"What are you talking about? Why do I want a confidant? What have I to
confide? What have I to tell any one?"

Our eyes are resting on each other, and, as I speak, I feel his go with
clean and piercing search right through mine into my soul. In a moment I
think of Musgrave, and the untold black tale now forever in my thought
attached to him, and, as I so think, the hot flush of agonized shame
that the recollection of him never fails to call to my face, invades
cheeks, brow, and throat. To hide it, I drop my head on Roger's breast.
Shall I tell him _now_, this instant? Is it possible that he has already
some faint and shadowy suspicion of the truth--some vague conjecture
concerning it, as something in his manner seems to say? But no! it is
absolutely impossible! Who, with the best will in the world, could have
told