“I hope,” say I, anxiously, “that you will never tell any one that I said that.  They would think that I was in the habit of calling people ‘’beasts’, and indeed—­indeed, I very seldom use so strong a word, even to Bobby.”

“Well,” he says, not heeding my request, not, I am sure, hearing it, and resuming his walk, “what is done cannot be undone, so there is no use whining about it, Nancy” (again stopping before me, and this time taking my face in his two hands).  “Will you mind much, or will you not?—­do you ever mind any thing much, I wonder?” (eagerly and wistfully scanning my face, as if trying to read my character through the mask of my pale skin, and small and unremarkable features).  “Well, there is no help for it—­as I did not go then, I must go now.”

“Go!” repeat I, panting in horrid surprise, “go where?—­to Antigua?”

“Yes, to Antigua.”

No need now to dress my voice in the tones of factitious tragedy—­no need to lengthen my face artificially.  It feels all of a sudden quite a yard and a half long.  Polly has stopped barking:  he is now calling, “Barb’ra!  Barbara!” in father’s voice, and he hits off the pompous severity of his tone with such awful accuracy, that did not my eyes assure me to the contrary, I could swear that my parent was in the room.

After a moment I rise, throw my arms round Sir Roger, and lay my head on his breast—­a most unwonted caress on my part, for we are not a couple by any means given to endearments.

“Do not go!” I say in a coaxing whisper, “do nothing of the kind!—­stay at home!”

“And will you go instead of me?” he asks with a gentle irony, stroking, the while, my plaits as delicately as if he were afraid that they would come off, which indeed, indeed, they would not.

“By myself,” say I, laughing, but not raising my head.

“Oh! of course; nothing I should like better, and I should be so invaluable in mending the sugar-canes, and keeping the new agent on his P’s and Q’s, should not I?”

He laughs.

“Stay!” say I, again whispering, as being more persuasive; “where would be the use of going now?  It would be shutting the stable-door after the steed was stolen, and—­” (this in a still lower voice)—­“we are beginning to get on so nicely, too.”

“Beginning!” he echoes, with a half-melancholy smile, “only beginning have not we always got on nicely?”

“And if we are poorer,” continue I, insinuatingly, “I believe we shall get on better still.  I am sure that poor people are fonder of one another than rich ones—­they have less to distract them from each other.”

I have now raised my head, and perceive that Sir Roger does not look very much convinced.

“But granting that poverty is better than riches, do you believe that it is, Nancy?—­for my part I doubt it—­for myself I will own to you that I have found it pleasant not to be obliged to look at sixpence upon both sides; but that” he says with straightforward simplicity, “is perhaps because I have not long been used to it—­because once, long ago, I wanted money badly—­I would have given my right hand for it, and could not get it!”