joyed_ it? I _hate_ to see a woman weep! it
makes me _miserable_! it always did; but I have not the slightest
objection--why, in Heaven's name, should I?--to tell you the cause of
her tears. She was talking to me about her child."

"Her _child_!" repeat I, in an accent of the sharpest, cuttingest scorn.
"And you were taken in! I knew that she made capital out of that child,
but I thought that it was only neophytes like Algy, for whose benefit it
was trotted out! I thought that _you_ were too much of a man of the
world, that she knew _you_ too well--" I laugh, derisively.

"Would you like to know the true history of the little Huntley?" I go
on, after a moment. "Would you like to know that its grandmother,
arriving unexpectedly, found it running wild about the lanes, a little
neglected heathen, out at elbows, and with its frock up to its knees,
and that she took it out of pure pity, Mrs. Zephine not making the
slightest objection, but, on the contrary, being heartily glad to be rid
of it--do you like to know _that_?"

"How do _you_ know it?" (speaking quickly)--"how did _you_ hear it?"

"I was told."

"But _who_ told you?"

"That is not of the slightest consequence."

"I wish to know."

"Mr. Musgrave told me."

I can manage his name better than I used, but even now I redden. For
once in his life, Roger, too, sneers as bitterly as I myself have been
doing.

"Mr. Musgrave seems to have told you a good many things."

This is carrying the war into the enemy's quarters, and so I feel it.
For the moment it shuts my mouth.

"Who is it that has put such notions into your head?" he asks, with
gathering excitement, speaking with rapid passion. "_Some one_ has! I am
as sure as that I stand here that they did not come there of themselves.
There was no room for such suspicions in the pure soul of the girl I
married."

I make no answer.

"If it were not for the _misery_ of it," he goes on, that dark flush
that colored his bronzed face the other night again spreading over it,
"I could _laugh_ at the gross absurdity of the idea! To begin such
fooleries at _my_ age! Nancy, Nancy!" his tone changing to one of
reproachful, heart-rending appeal--"has it never struck you that it is a
little hard, considering all things, that _you_ should suspect _me_?"

Still I am silent.

"Tell me what you wish me to do!" he cries, with passionate emphasis.
"Tell me what you wish me to leave undone! I will do it! I will leave it
undone