“We did not mention his name.”

There is something so abrupt and trenchant in his tone that I have not the spirit to pursue my inquiries any further.  In deep astonishment and still deeper mortification, I pursue my way in silence.

Suddenly Roger comes to a stand-still.

“Nancy!” he says, in a voice that is more like his own, stopping and laying his hands on my shoulders; while in his eyes is something of his old kindness; yet not quite the old kindness either; there is more of unwilling, rueful yearning in them than there ever was in that—­“Nancy, how old are you?—­nineteen, is it not?”

“Very nearly twenty,” reply I, cheerfully, for he has called me “Nancy,” and I hail it as a sign of returning fine weather; “we may call it twenty; will not it be a comfort when I am well out of my teens?”

“And I am forty-eight,” he says, as if speaking more to himself than to me, and sighing heavily; “it is a monstrous, an unnatural disparity!”

“It is not nearly so bad as if it were the other way,” reply I, laughing gayly; “I forty-eight, and you twenty, is it?”

“My child! my child!”—­speaking with an accent of, to me, unaccountable suffering—­“what possessed me to marry you? why did not I adopt you instead?  It would have been a hundred times more seemly!”

“It is a little late to think of that now, is not it?” I say, with an uncomfortable smile; then I go on, with an uneasy laugh, “that was the very idea that occurred to us the first night you arrived; at least, it never struck us as possible that you would take any notice of me, but we all said what a good thing it would be for the family if you would adopt Barbara or the Brat.”

“Did you?” (very quickly, in a tone of keen pain); “it struck you all in the same light then?”

“But that was before we had seen you,” I answer, hastily, repenting my confession as soon as I see its effects.  “When we had, we soon changed our tune.”

“If I had adopted you,” he pursues, still looking at me with the same painful and intent wistfulness, “if I had been your father, you would have been fond of me, would not you?  Not afraid of me—­not afraid to tell me any thing that most nearly concerned you—­you would perhaps”—­(with a difficult smile)—­“you would perhaps have made me your confidant, would you, Nancy?”

I look up at him in utter bewilderment.

“What are you talking about?  Why do I want a confidant?  What have I to confide?  What have I to tell any one?”