“He may forgive them or leave them unforgiven as He sees best; but—­I will never forgive you!”

“What!” he cries, his face growing even more ash-white than it was before, and his voice quivering with a passionate anger; “not for Barbara’s sake?”

I shudder.  I hate to hear him pronounce her name.

“No,” say I, steadily, “not for Barbara’s sake!”

“You will have to,” he cries violently; “it is nonsense! think of the close connection, of the relationship that there will be between us! think of the remarks you will excite! you will defeat your own object!”

“I will excite no remark!” I reply resolutely.  “I will be quite civil to you!  I will say ‘good-morning’ and ‘good-evening’ to you; if you ask me a question I will answer it; but—­I will never forgive you!”

We are standing, as I before observed, close together, and are so wholly occupied—­voices, eyes, and ears—­with each other, that we do not perceive the approach of two hitherto unseen people who are coming dawdling and chatting up the conservatory that opens out of the room; two people that I suppose have been there, unknown to us, all along.  They have come quite close now, and we must needs perceive them.

In a second our eager talk drops into silence, and we look with involuntary, startled apprehension toward them.  They are Roger and Mrs. Huntley.  This is why he acceded with such alacrity to my request.  This is why he was so afraid of being late.  He has been helping her to smell the jasmine, and to look down the datura’s great white trumpet-throats.

Even at this agitated moment I have time to think this with a jeering pain.  The next instant all other feelings are swallowed up in breathless dread as to how they will meet.  My fears are groundless.  On first becoming aware, indeed, whose tete-a-tete it is that he has interrupted, whose low, quick voices they are that have dropped into such sudden, suspicious silence at his approach—­I can see him start perceptibly, can see his gray eyes dart with lightning quickness from Musgrave to me, and from me to Musgrave; and in his voice there is to me an equally perceptible tone of ice-coldness; but to an ordinary observer it would seem the greeting, neither more nor less warm, exchanged between two moderately friendly acquaintances meeting after absence.

“How are you, Musgrave?  I had no idea that you were in this part of the world!”

“No more had I!” answers Musgrave, with an exaggerated laugh.  “No more I was, until—­until to-day.”

He has not caught the infection of Roger’s stately calm.  His face has not recovered a trace of even its usual slight color, and his eyes are twitching nervously.  Mrs. Huntley appears unaware of any thing.  Her artistic eye has been caught by the tight bean-pot, and her fingers are employed in trying to give a little air of ease and liberty to its crowded inmates.  Then, thank God, the others come in, and dinner is announced, and the situation is ended.