he note, and
is reading it again.

"She seems to have no doubt"--(with rising wonder in face and
voice)--"as to its greatly pleasing _you_!"

"So it would have done at one time," I answer, still speaking (though no
one could guess with what difficulty), with resolute equanimity.

"And does not it now?" (very quickly, and sending the searching scrutiny
of his eyes through me).

"I do not know," I answer hazily, putting up my hand to my forehead. "I
cannot make up my mind, it all seems so sudden."

A pause. Roger has forgotten the partridges. He is sunk in reflection.

"Was there ever any talk of this before?" he says, presently, with a
hesitating and doubtful accent, and an altogether staggered look. "Had
you any reason--any ground for thinking that he cared about her?"

"Great ground," reply I, touching my cheeks with the tips of my fingers,
and feeling, with a sense of self-gratulation, that their temperature is
gradually, if slowly, lowering, "_every_ ground--at _one_ time!"

"At _what_ time!"

"In the autumn," say I, slowly; my mind reluctantly straying back to the
season of my urgent invitations, of my pressing friendlinesses, "and at
Christmas, and after Christmas."

"Yes?" (with a quick eagerness, as if expecting to hear more).

"The boys," continue I, speaking without any ease or fluency, for the
subject is always one irksome and difficult to me, "the boys took it
quite for granted--looked upon it as a certain thing that he meant
seriously until--"

"Until what?" (almost snatching the words out of my mouth).

"Until--well!" (with a short, forced laugh), "until they found that he
did not."

"And--do you know?--but of course you do--can you tell me how they
discovered that?"

He is looking at me with that same greedy anxiety in his eyes, which I
remember in our last fatal conversation about Musgrave.

"He went away," reply I, unable any longer to keep watch and ward over
my countenance and voice, rising and walking hastily to the window.

The moment I have done it, I repent. _However_ red I was, _however_
confused I looked, it would have been better to have remained and faced
him. For several minutes there is silence. I look out at the stiff
comeliness of the variously tinted asters, at the hoary-colored dew that
is like a film along the morning grass. I do not know what _he_ looks
at, because I have my back to him, but I think he is looking at
Barbara's note again. At least, I judge this by wh