“Foolish fellow!  I wish he had not come!”

“I dare say he returns the compliment.”

“I wish she would leave him alone!” he says, with an accent of impatience, more to himself than to me.

“That is so likely,” say I, quickly, “so much her way, is not it?”

I suppose that something in the exceeding bitterness of my tone strikes him, for his eyes return from Algy to me.

“Nancy,” he says, speaking with a sort of hesitating impulse, while a dark flush crosses his face, “it has occurred to me once or twice—­if the idea had been less unspeakably absurd, it would have occurred to me many times—­that you are—­are jealous of Zephine and me!—­YOU jealous of ME!!”

There is such a depth of emphasis in his last words—­such a wealth of reproachful appeal in the eyes that are bent on me—­that I can answer nothing.  I say neither yea nor nay.  He has sat down on the couch beside me.

“Tell me,” he says, with low, quick excitement—­“and for God’s sake do not grow scarlet, and turn your head aside as you mostly have done—­did you, or did you not know that—­that Musgrave was to be here to-day?”

“I did not—­indeed I did not!” I cry, with passionate eagerness; thankful for once to be able to tell the truth; “we none of us did—­not even Barbara!”

He repeats my last words with a slightly sarcastic inflection, “not even Barbara!”

A moment’s pause.

“Why did you stop talking so suddenly, the moment that we interrupted you?” he asks, with an abruptness that is almost harsh—­“what were you talking about?”

Phew! how hot it is! even though one is by the open window!—­even despite the cool moistness of the night wind.

“I was—­I was—­I was—­congratulating him!” I say, doing the very thing he has forbidden me, reddening and turning half away.  He makes no rejoinder; only I hear him sigh, and put his hand with a quick, impatient movement to his head.

“You believe me?” I ask, timidly, laying my hand on his arm.

“No, I do not!” he replies, shaking off my touch, and turning his stern and glittering eyes full upon me, “I should be a fool and an idiot if I did!”

Then he rises hastily and leaves me.  I watch him as he joins the other men.  They are all round her now—­all but Musgrave.

Algy has left his corner and his reversed picture-book, moved thereto by the unparalleled audacity of young Parker, who has pulled one of the sofa-cushions down on the floor, and is squatting on it, like a great toad at her feet, examining a gnat-bite on her sacred arm.

Even the old host is doing the agreeable according to his lights.  In a very loud voice he is narrating a long anecdote about a pretty girl that he once saw at a windmill near Seville, during the Peninsular.  With a most unholy chuckle he is trying to hint that there was more between him and the young lady than it well beseems him to tell; but fortunately no one, but I, is listening to him.