at he says next--"Poor
little soul!" (in an accent of the honestest, tenderest pity), "how
happy she seems!"

"Ah!" say I, with a bitter little laugh, "she will mend of _that_, will
not she?"

He does not echo my mirth; indeed, I think I hear him sigh.

"'Romances paint at full length people's wooings,
But only give a bust of marriages!'"

say I, in soft quotation, addressing rather myself and my thoughts than
my companion.

He has joined me; he, too, is looking out at the serene aster-flowers,
at the glittering glory of the dew.

"Since when you have learned to quote 'Don Juan?'" he asks, with a sort
of surprise.

"Since _when_?" I reply, with the same tart playfulness--"oh! since I
married! I date all my accomplishments from then!--it is my anno
Domini."

Another silence. Then Sir Roger speaks again, and this time his words
seem as slow and difficult of make as mine were just now.

"Nancy!" he says, in a low voice, not looking at me, but still facing
the flowers and the sunshiny autumn sward, "do you believe
that--that--_this fellow_ cares about her really?--she is too good to be
made--to be made--a mere _cat's-paw_ of!"

"A _cat's-paw_!" cry I, turning quickly round with raised voice; the
blood that so lately retired from it rushing again headlong all over my
face; "I do not know--what you mean--what you are talking about!"

He draws his breath heavily, and pauses a moment before he speaks.

"God knows," he says, looking solemnly up, "that I had no wish to broach
this subject again--God knows that I meant to have done with it
forever--but now that it has been forced against my will--against both
our wills--upon me, I must ask you this one question--tell me,
Nancy--tell me truly _this_ time"--(with an accent of acute pain on the
word "_this_")--"can you say, _on your honor--on your honor_,
mind--that you believe this--this man loves Barbara, as a man should
love his wife?"

If he had worded his interrogation differently, I should have been
sorely puzzled to answer it; as it is, in the form his question takes, I
find a loop-hole of escape.

"As a man should love his wife?" I reply, with a derisive laugh, "and
how is that? I do not think I quite know!--very dearly, I suppose, but
not quite so dearly as if she were his neighbor's--is that it?"

As I speak, I look up at him, with a malicious air of pseudo-innocence.
But if I expect to see any guilt--any conscious shrinking in his face--I
am mi