or beyond our parting, and my tears, it is _impossible_ that
she can have told him aught.

Men are not prone to publish their own discomfitures; even _I_ know that
much. I exonerate Mr. Musgrave from all share in making it known--and
have the mossed tree-trunks lips? or the loud brook an articulate
tongue? Thank God! thank God! _no!_ Nature never blabs. With infinite
composure, with a most calm smile she _listens_, but she never tells
again.

A little reassured by this thought, I resolve to remain in doubt no
longer than I can help, but to ascertain, if necessary, by direct
inquiry, whether my suspicions are correct. This determination is no
sooner come to than it puts fresh life and energy into my limbs. I take
off my hat and jacket, smooth my hair, and prepare with some alacrity
for luncheon.

It is evening, however, before I have an opportunity of putting my
resolve in practice. At luncheon, there are the servants; all afternoon,
Roger is closeted with his agent: before we set off this morning, he
never mentioned the agent: he never figured at all in our day's plan--(I
imagined that he was to be kept till to-morrow); and at dinner there are
the servants again. Thank God, they are gone now! We are alone, Roger
and I. We are sitting in my boudoir, as in my day-dreams, before his
return, I had pictured us; but, alas! where is caressing proximity which
figured in all my visions? where is the stool on which I was to sit at
his feet, with head confidently leaned on his arm? As it happens, Vick
is sitting on the stool, and we occupy two arm-chairs, at civil distance
from each other, much as if we had been married sixty years, and had
hated each other for fifty-nine of them. I am idly fiddle-faddling with
a piece of work, and Roger--is it possible?--is stretching out his hand
toward a book.

"You do not mean to say that you are going to _read_?" I say, in a tone
of sharp vexation.

He lays it down again.

"If you had rather talk, I will not."

"I am afraid," say I, with a sour laugh, "that you have not kept much
conversation _for home use_! I suppose you exhausted it all, this
morning, at Laurel Cottage!"

He passes his hand slowly across his forehead.

"Perhaps!--I do not think I am in a very talking vein."

"By-the-by," say I, my heart beating thick, and with a hurry and tremor
in my voice, as I approach the desired yet dreaded theme, "you have
never told me what it was, besides Mr. Huntley's debts, that you t