there, unknown to us, all along.
They have come quite close now, and we must needs perceive them.

In a second our eager talk drops into silence, and we look with
involuntary, startled apprehension toward them. They are Roger and Mrs.
Huntley. This is why he acceded with such alacrity to my request. This
is why he was so afraid of being late. He has been helping her to smell
the jasmine, and to look down the datura's great white trumpet-throats.

Even at this agitated moment I have time to think this with a jeering
pain. The next instant all other feelings are swallowed up in breathless
dread as to how they will meet. My fears are groundless. On first
becoming aware, indeed, whose _tete-a-tete_ it is that he has
interrupted, whose low, quick voices they are that have dropped into
such sudden, suspicious silence at his approach--I can see him start
perceptibly, can see his gray eyes dart with lightning quickness from
Musgrave to me, and from me to Musgrave; and in his voice there is to me
an equally perceptible tone of ice-coldness; but to an ordinary observer
it would seem the greeting, neither more nor less warm, exchanged
between two moderately friendly acquaintances meeting after absence.

"How are you, Musgrave? I had no idea that you were in this part of the
world!"

"No more had I!" answers Musgrave, with an exaggerated laugh. "No more I
was, until--until _to-day_."

He has not caught the infection of Roger's stately calm. His face has
not recovered a _trace_ of even its usual slight color, and his eyes are
twitching nervously. Mrs. Huntley appears unaware of any thing. Her
artistic eye has been caught by the tight bean-pot, and her fingers are
employed in trying to give a little air of ease and liberty to its
crowded inmates. Then, thank God, the others come in, and dinner is
announced, and the situation is ended.

The old host, still under the influence of his hallucination, is bearing
down like a hawk (with his old bent elbow extended) on Barbara, until
intercepted and redirected by a whispered roar and graphic pantomime on
the part of his nephew. Then, at last, he realizes Roger's bad taste,
and we go in.

As soon as we are seated, I look about me. It is a round table. For my
part, I hate a round table. There is no privacy in it. Everybody seems
eavesdropping on everybody else.

There are only eight of us in all--those I have enumerated, and Algy.
Yes, he is here. Bellona is a goddess who can always s