“Something about the boys, of course!”—­(half fretfully)—­“it is always the boys.”

“It is nothing about the boys—­quite wrong.  That is one.”

“The fair Zephine is no more!—­by-the-by, I suppose I should have heard of that.”

“It is nothing about the fair Zephine—­wrong again!  That is two!”

“Barbara has got leave to stay till Easter!”

“Nothing about Barbara! “—­(with a slight momentary pang at the ease and unconcern with which he mentions her name).—­“By-the-by, I wish you would give up calling her Barbara;’ she never calls you ‘Frank!’ There, you have had your three guesses, and you have never come within a mile of it—­I shall have to tell you—­Roger is coming back!” opening my eyes and beginning to laugh joyously.

“Soon?” with a quick and breathless change of tone, that I cannot help perceiving, turning sharply upon me.

“At once!” reply I, triumphantly; “we may expect him any day!”

He receives this information in total silence.  He does not attempt the faintest or slightest congratulation.

“I wish I had not told you!” cry I, indignantly; “what a fool I was to imagine that you would feel the slightest interest in any thing that did not concern yourself personally!  Of course” (turning a scarlet face and blazing-eyes full upon him), “I did not expect you to feel glad—­I have known you too long for that—­but you might have had the common civility to say you were!”

We have stopped.  We stand facing each other in the narrow wood-path, while the beck noisily babbles past, and the thrushes answer each other in lovely dialogue.  He is deadly pale; his lips are trembling, and his eyes—­involuntarily I look away from them!

“I am not glad!” he says, with slow distinctness; “often—­often you have blamed me for hinting and implying for using innuendoes and half-words, and once—­once, do you recollect?—­you told me to my face I lied! Well, I will not lie now; you shall have no cause to blame me to-day.  I will tell you the truth, the truth that you know as well as I do—­I am not glad!”

Absolute silence.  I could no more answer or interrupt him than I could soar up between the dry tree-boughs to heaven.  I stand before him with parted lips, and staring eyes fixed in a stony, horrid astonishment on his face.

“Nancy,” he says, coming a step nearer, and speaking in almost a whisper, “you are not glad either!  For once speak the truth!  Hypocrisy is always difficult to you.  You are the worst actress I ever saw—­speak the truth for once!  Who is there to hear you but me?  I, who know it already—­who have known it ever since that first evening in Dresden!  Do you recollect?—­but of course you do—­why do I ask you?  Why should you have forgotten any more than I?”

Still I am silent.  Though I stand in the free clear air of heaven, I could not feel more choked and gasping were I in some close and stifling dungeon, hundreds of feet underground.  I think that the brook must have got into my brain, there is such a noise of bubbling and brawling in it.  Barbara, Roger, Algy, a hundred confused ideas of pain and dismay jostle each other in my head.