I think that I must be late.  Roger went down some minutes ago, at my request, so that there might be one representative of the family in time.

I hasten down-stairs, fastening my last bracelet as I go, and open the drawing-room door.  I was wrong.  There is no one down yet:  even Roger has disappeared.  I am the first.  This is my impression for a moment:  then I perceive that there is some one in the bow-window, half hidden by the drooped curtains; some one who, hearing my entry, is advancing to meet me.  It is Musgrave!  My first impulse, a wrong one, I need hardly say, is to turn and flee.  I have even laid hold of the just abandoned handle, when he speaks.

“Are you going?” he says in a low voice, marked by great and evidently ungovernable agitation; “do not! if you wish, I will leave the room.”

I look at him, and our eyes meet.  He always was a pale young man—­no bucolic beef-and-beer ruddiness about him—­always of a healthy swart pallor; but now he is deadly white!—­so, by-the-by, I fancy am I!  His dark eyes burn with a shamed yet eager glow.

With the words and tones of our last parting ringing in our ears, we both feel that it would be useless affectation to attempt to meet as ordinary acquaintance.

“No,” say I, faintly, almost in a whisper, “it—­it does not matter! only that I did not know that you were to be here!”

“No more did I, until this morning!” he answers, eagerly; “this morning —­at the last moment—­young Parker asked me to come down with him—­and I —­I knew we must meet sooner or later—­that it could not be put off forever, and so I thought we might as well get over it here as anywhere else!”

Neither of us has thought of sitting down.  He is speaking with rapid, low emotion, and I stand stupidly listening.

“I suppose so,” I answer lazily.  I cannot for the life of me help it, friends.  I am back in Brindley Wood.  He has come a few steps nearer me.  His voice is always low, but now it is almost a whisper in which he is so rapidly, pantingly speaking.

“I shall most likely not have another opportunity, probably we shall not be alone again, and I must hear, I must know—­have you forgiven me?”.

As he speaks, the recollection of all the ill he has done me, of my lost self-respect, my alienated Roger, my faded life, pass before my mind.

“That I have not!” reply I, looking full at him, and speaking with a distinct and heavy emphasis of resentment and aversion, “and, by God’s help, I never will!”

“You will not!” he cries, starting back with an expression of the utmost anger and discomfiture.  “You will not! you will carry vengeance for one mad minute through a whole life!  It is impossible! impossible! if you are so unforgiving, how do you expect God to forgive you your sins?”

I shrug my shoulders with a sort of despairing contempt.  God has seemed to me but dim of late.