I look up at him in strong surprise.  We are in the park now—­our own unpeopled, silent park, where none but the deer can see us; and yet he has not offered me the smallest caress; not once has he called me “Nancy;” he, to whom hitherto my homely name has appeared so sweet.  It is only an hour and three-quarters since I parted from him, and yet in that short space an indisputable shade—­a change that exits not only in my imagination, but one that no most careless, superficial eye could avoid seeing—­has come over him.  Face, manner, even gait, are all altered, I think of Algy—­Algy as he used to be, our jovial pet and playfellow, Algy as he now is, soured, sulky, unloving, his very beauty dimmed by discontent and passion.  Is this the beginning of a like change in Roger?

A spasm of jealous agony, of angry despair, contracts my heart as I think this.

“Well, are all Mr. Huntley’s debts paid?” I ask, trying to speak in a tone of sprightly ease; “is there a good hope of his coming back soon?”

“Not yet a while; in time, perhaps, he may.”

Still there is not a vestige of a smile on his face.  He does not look at me as he speaks; his eyes are on the long, dead knots of the colorless grass at his feet; in his expression despondency and preoccupation strive for supremacy.

“Have you made your head ache?” I say, gently stealing my hand into his; “there is nothing that addles the brains like muddling over accounts, is there?”

Am I awake? Can I believe it?  He has dropped my hand, as if he disliked the touch of it.

“No, thanks, no.  I have no headache,” he answers, hastily.

Another little silence.  We are marching quickly along, as if our great object were to get our tete-a-tete over.  As we came, we dawdled, stood still to listen to the lark, to look at the wool-soft cloud-heaps piled in the west—­on any trivial excuse indeed; but now all these things are changed.

“Did you talk of business all the time?” I ask, by-and-by, with timid curiosity.

It is not my fancy; he does plainly hesitate.

“Not quite all” he answers, in a low voice, and still looking away from me.

“About what, then?” I persist, in a voice through whose counterfeit playfulness I myself too plainly hear the unconquerable tremulousness; “may not I hear?—­or is it a secret?”

He does not answer; it seems to me that he is considering what response to make.

“Perhaps,” say I, still with a poor assumption of lightness and gayety, “perhaps you were talking of—­of old times.”

He laughs a little, but whose laugh has he borrowed? in that dry, harsh tone there is nothing of my Roger’s mellow mirth!

“Not we; old times must take care of themselves; one has enough to do with the new ones, I find.”

“Did she—­did she say any thing to you about—­about Algy, then?”—­ hesitatingly.