An iron-gray, middle-aged gentleman stands before me, more vigorous, more full of healthy life than two-thirds of the puny youth, nourished on sherry and bitters, of the present small generation, but with no wish, no smallest effort to take away one from the burden of years that God has laid on his strong shoulders.

There is no doubt that I shall not speak first, so for a moment there is a profound silence.  Then I find my hot hand in Sir Roger’s where it has so often and so familiarly lain before, and I hear Sir Roger’s voice addressing me.

“I am an old fool, Nancy, and you have come to tell me so?”

Somehow I know that the bronze of his face is a little paled by emotion, but there is no sawny sentiment in his tone, none of the lover’s whine.  It is the same voice—­as manly, as sustained—­that made comments on Bobby’s little bear.  And yet, for the moment, I am physically unable to answer him.  Who can answer the simplest question ever put with a lump the size of a cocoa-nut in their throat?  My eyelids are still hopelessly drooped over my eyes, but, by some sense that is not eyesight, I am aware that there is a sort of shyness in his face, a diffidence in his address.

“Nancy, have I come back too soon? am I hurrying you?”

I raise my eyes for an instant, and then let them fall.

“No, thank you,” I say, demurely, “not at all.  I have had plenty of time!”

And then, somehow, there seems to me something so ludicrous in the sound of my own speech, that I tremble on the verge of a burst of loud and unwilling laughter.

“Speak out all your thought to me, whatever it is,” he says, in a tone of grave entreaty, moved and tender, yet manly withal.  “Look at me with the same friendly, fearless eyes that you did last week!  I know, my dear, that you always think of others more than yourself, and I dare say that now you are afraid of hurting me!  Indeed, you need not be!  I am tough and well-seasoned; I have known what pain is before now—­it would be very odd, at my time of life, if I had not!  I can well bear a little more, and be the better for it, perhaps.”

I stand stupidly silent.  One’s outer man or woman often does an injustice to one’s inner feelings.  As he speaks, my heart goes out to him, but I can find no words in which to dress my thought.

“Nancy!” in a tone of thorough distress.  “I can bear any thing but seeing you shrink and shiver away from me, as I have seen you do from your father.”

“You never will see that,” reply I, laconically, gathering bravery enough to look him in the face, as I deliver this encouraging remark.

“Do you think,” he says, beginning to walk restlessly about the room—­ (long ago he dropped my limp hand)—­“that all this week I have had much hope?  Every time that I have caught a glimpse of myself in the glass, I have said, ’Is this a face likely to take a child’s fancy?  Do you bear much resemblance to the hero of her storybooks?’ My dear”—­(stopping before me)—­“you cannot think my presumption more absurd than I do myself.”