him? Is not the tale safely buried in the deep grave of Musgrave's
and my two hearts?

I raise my head, and twice essay to speak. Twice I stop, choked. How can
I put into words the insult I have received? How can I reveal to him the
slack levity, the careless looseness, with which I have kept the honor
confided to me?

As my eyes stray helplessly round in a vain search for advice or help
from the infinite unfeeling apathy of Nature, I catch sight of the
distant chimneys of the abbey! How near it is! After all, why should I
sow dissension between such close neighbors? why make an irreparable
breach between two families, hitherto united by the kindly ties of
mutual friendship and good-will?

Frank is young, very young; he has been--so Roger himself told me--very
ill brought up. Perhaps he has already repented, who knows? I try to
persuade myself that these are the reasons--and sufficient reasons--of
my silence, and I take my resolution afresh. I will be dumb. The flush
slowly dies out of my face, and, when I think it is almost gone, I
venture to look again at Roger. I think that his eyes have never left
me. They seem to be expecting me to speak, but, as I still remain
silent, he turns at length away, and also gently removes his hands from
my shoulders. We stand apart.

"Well, Nancy," he says, sighing again, as if from the bottom of his
soul, "my poor child, it is no use talking about it. I can never be your
father now."

"And a very good thing too!" rejoin I, with a dogged stoutness. "I do
not see what I want with _two_ fathers; I have always found _one_ amply
enough--quite as much as I could manage, in fact."

He seems hardly to be listening to me. He has dropped his eyes on the
ground, and is speaking more to himself than to me.

"Husband and wife we are!" he says, with a slow depression of tone,
"and, as long as God's and man's laws stand, husband and wife we must
remain!"

"You are not very polite," I cry, with an indignant lump rising in my
throat; "you speak as if you were _sorry_ for it--_are_ you?"

He lifts his eyes again, and again their keen search investigates the
depths of my soul; but no human eye can rightly read the secrets of any
other human spirit; they find what they expect to find, not what is
there. Clear and cuttingly keen as they are, Roger's eyes do not read my
soul aright.

"Are _you_, Nancy?"

"If _you_ are, I am," I reply, with a half-smothered sob.

He makes no rejoinder, and we