ause he lit Mrs. Huntley's candle for her."

"Yes," say I, breathing short and hard. Has not he himself introduced
her name?

"And you know Parker is always ready for a row--loves it--and as he is
as screwed to-night as he well can be, it has been as much as we could
do to make them keep their hands off each other!" After a moment he
adds: "Silly boy! he has been doing his best to fall out with _me_, but
I would not let him compass that."

"Has he?"

Roger has begun to walk up and down, as I did a while ago; on his face a
look of unquiet discontent.

"It was a mistake his coming here this time," he says, with a sort of
anger, and yet compassion, in his tone. "If he had had a grain of sense,
he would have staid away!"

"It is a thousand pities that you cannot send us _all_ home again!" I
say, with a tight, pale smile--"send us packing back again, Algy and
Barbara and _me_--replace me on the wall among the broken bottles, where
you found me."

My voice shakes as I make this dreary joke.

"Why do you say that?" he cries, passionately. "Why do you _torment_ me?
You know as well as I do, that it is impossible--out of the question!
You know that I am no more able to free you than--"

"You _would_, then, if you _could_?" cry I, breathing short and hard.
"You _own_ it!"

For a moment he hesitates; then--

"Yes," he says firmly, "I would! I did not think at one time that I
should ever have lived to say it, but I _would_."

"You are at least candid," I answer, with a sort of smothered sob,
turning away.

"Nancy!" he cries, following me, and taking hold of my cold and clammy
hands, while what _looks_--what, at least, I should have once said
_looked_--like a great yearning fills his kind and handsome eyes; "we
are not very happy, are we? perhaps, child, we never shall be now--often
I think so. Well, it cannot be helped, I suppose. We are not the first,
and we shall not be the last! (with a deep and bitter sigh). But indeed,
I think, dear, that we are unhappier than we need be."

I shrug my shoulders with a sort of careless despair.

"Do you think so? I fancy not. Some people have their happiness thinly
spread over their whole lives, like bread-and-scrape!" I say, with a
homely bitterness. "Some people have it in a _lump_! that is all the
difference! I had mine in a _lump_--all crowded into nineteen years that
is, nineteen _very good years_!" I end, sobbing.

He still has hold of my hands. His face is full of di