scomfortably, as I absently
eye the two halves of my paper-knife, which, after having given one or
two warning cracks, has now snapped in the middle. Then Roger enters,
and our talk ends.

CHAPTER XLII.

"God made a foolish woman, making me!"

"Have you any idea whom we shall meet?"

It is Barbara who asks this one morning at breakfast. The question
refers to a three days' visit that it has become our fate to pay to a
house in the neighborhood--a house not eight miles distant from Tempest,
and over which we are grumbling in the minute and exhaustive manner
which people mostly employ when there is a question of making merry with
their friends.

I shake my head.

"I have not an idea, that is to say, except Mrs. Huntley, and she goes
without saying!"

"Why?"

"We are known to be such inseparables, that she is always asked to meet
us," reply I, with that wintry smile, which is my last accomplishment.
"We pursue her round the country, do not we, Roger?"

Barbara opens her great eyes, but, with her usual tact, she says
nothing. She sees that she has fallen on stony ground.

"She is _the oldest friend that we have in the world_!" continue I,
laughing pleasantly.

Roger does not answer, he does not even look up, but by a restless
movement that he makes in his chair, by a tiny contraction of the brows,
I see that my shot has told. I am becoming an adept in the infliction of
these pin-pricks. It is one of the few pleasures I have left.

The day of our visit has come. We have relieved our feelings by
grumbling up to the hall-door. Our murmuring must per force be stilled
now, though indeed, were we to _shout_ our discontents at the top of our
voices, there would be small fear of our being overheard by the master
of the house, he being the boundlessly deaf old gentleman who paid his
respects at Tempest on the day of Mrs. Huntley's first call, and
insisted on mistaking Barbara for me. Whether he is yet set right on
that head is a point still enveloped in Cimmerian gloom.

It is a bachelor establishment, as any one may perceive by a cursory
glance at the disposition of the drawing-room furniture, and at the
unfortunate flowers, tightly jammed, packed as thickly as they will go
in one huge central bean-pot.

As we arrived rather late and were at once conducted to our rooms, we
still remain in the dark as to our co-guests. Personally, I am not much
interested in the question. There cannot be anybody that i