I
lost heart altogether. I might soften it and soften it--pretend that her
father owed a greater duty to the King than to me, and must have thought
it right to do as he had done. But she would see through it all: that I
knew very well.

"Dolly," said I, very slowly, "I have not told you yet, because there
was nothing in the world that you could do to help me. I have waited,
thinking that matters might come straight again; but they have not. I
will tell you, then, before you go home again. I promise you that. And
on my side I ask you not to question me this evening. Let us have this
one evening without any troubles at all."

She looked at me very earnestly for a moment without speaking; and I
could see that her lightness of manner had been but put on to disguise
how anxious she was. It is wonderful how a woman--in spite of her
foolishness at other times--can read the heart of a man. I had said very
little to her in my letters; and yet I could see now how she had
suffered all the while. I had thought myself to have been alone in my
unhappiness; now I understood that never for an instant had I been so;
and my whole heart rose up in a kind of exultation and longing. Then she
swallowed down her anxiety.

"I take you at your word, Cousin Roger," she said lightly. "I will ask
no question at all."

Then Anne and my man James came in with the supper.

* * * * *

I think there is not one moment of that evening in my old lodgings that
I have forgotten. As now I look back upon it it seems to me to have that
kind of brightness which a garden has when a storm is coming up very
quickly, and the clouds are very black, and yet the shadow has not yet
reached it. I remember how the curtains hung across the windows; they
were my own old curtains of blue stuff, a little faded but still rich
and good; how the fire glowed in the wide chimney; how Dolly looked
across the table, in her blue sac, with lace, and her wide sleeves, and
her little pearls. She had dressed up, all for me, as indeed I had for
her, for I was in my maroon suit, with my silver-handled sword and my
black periwig. Ah! and above all I remember the very look in her eyes as
she suddenly clapped her hands together. (The servants were out of the
room at that instant.)

"Cousin Roger!" she said, "I shall never keep my promise unless I am
distracted. We will go to the play: you and I and Anne, all together:
and your man James shall wait upo