alked
of this morning!--you owned that you did not talk of business _quite_
all the time!"

"Did I?"

He has forgotten his book now; across the flame of the candles, he is
looking full and steadily at me.

"When I asked you, you said it was not about old times?--of
course--" (laughing acridly)--"I can imagine your becoming illimitably
diffuse about _them_, but you told me, that, 'No,' you did not mention
them."

"I told truth."

"You also said," continue I, with my voice still trembling, and my
pulses throbbing, "that it was not _Algy_ that you were discussing!--if
_I_ had been in your place, I could, perhaps, have found a good deal to
say about _him_; but you told me that you never mentioned him."

"We did not."

"Then what _did_ you talk about?" I ask, in strong excitement; "it must
have been a very odd theme that you find such difficulty in repeating."

Still he is looking, with searching gravity, full in my face.

"Do you _really_ wish to know?"

I cannot meet his eyes: something in me makes me quail before them. I
turn mine away, but answer, stoutly:

"Yes, I _do_ wish. Why should I have asked, if I did not?"

Still he says nothing: still I feel, though I am not looking at him,
that his eyes are upon me.

"Was it--" say I, unable any longer to bear that dumb gaze, and
preferring to take the bull by the horns, and rush on my fate--"was it
any thing about _me_? has she been telling you any tales of--of--_me_?"

No answer! No sound but the clock, and Vick's heavy breathing, as she
peacefully snores on the footstool. I _cannot_ bear the suspense. Again
I lift my eyes, and look at him. Yes, I am right! the intense
anxiety--the overpowering emotion on his face tell me that I have
touched the right string.

"Are there--are there--are you aware that there are any tales that she
_could_ tell of you?"

Again I laugh harshly.

"Ha! ha! if we came to mutual anecdotes, I am not quite sure that I
might not have the best of it!"

"That is not the question," he replies, in a voice so exceedingly stern,
so absolutely different from any thing I have ever hitherto contemplated
as possible in my gentle, genial Roger, that again, to the depths of my
soul, I quail; how could I ever, in wildest dreams, have thought I
should dare to tell him?--"it is nothing to me what tales _you_ can tell
of _her_!--_she_ is not my wife!--what I wish to know--what I _will_
know, is, whether there is any thing that she _could_ say