Nancy Part 15

"_Catch_ it! you talk as if it were a _disease_. Well" (speaking demurely), "perhaps on the whole it _would_ be more convenient if I were to know it."

Silence.

"Well! what is it?"

No answer.

"I shall have to ask at your lodge!"

"Who _can_ p.r.o.nounce his _own_ name in cold blood?" he says, reddening a little. "I, for one, cannot--there--if you do not mind looking at this card--"

He takes one out of his pocket, and I stop--we are slowly strolling back--under a lamp, to read it:

MR. FRANCIS MUSGRAVE, MUSGRAVE ABBEY.

"Oh, thanks--_Musgrave_--yes."

"And Sir Roger has never mentioned me to you _really_?" he says, recurring with persistent hurt vanity to the topic. "How very odd of him!"

"Not in the least odd!" reply I, brusquely. "Why should he? He knew that I was not aware of your existence, and that therefore you would not be a very interesting subject to me; no doubt"--(smiling a little)--"I shall hear all about you from him now."

He is silent.

"And do you live _here_ at this abbey"--(pointing to the card I still hold in my hand)--"_all by yourself_?"

"Do you mean without a _wife_?" he asks, with a half-sneering smile.

"Yes--I have that misfortune."

"I was not thinking of a _wife_," say I, rather angrily. "It never occurred to me that you could have one! you are too young--a great deal too young!"

"_Too young_, am I? At what age, then, may one be supposed to deserve that blessing? forty? fifty? sixty?"

I feel rather offended, but cannot exactly grasp in my own mind the ground of offense.

"I meant, of course, had you any father? any mother?"

"Neither. I am that most affecting spectacle--an orphan-boy."

"You have no brothers and sisters, I am _sure_," say I, confidently.

"I have not, but why you should be _sure_ of it, I am at a loss to imagine."

"You seem to take offense rather easily," I say, ingenuously. "You looked quite cross when I said I did not think much of the flowers--and again when I said I had forgotten your name--and again when I told you, you were too young to have a wife: now, you know, in a large family, one has all that sort of nonsense knocked out of one."

"Has one?" (rather shortly).

"n.o.body would mind whether one were huffy or not," continue I; "they would only laugh at one."

"What a pleasant, civil-spoken thing a large family must be!" he says, dryly.

We have reached Sir Roger. I had set off on my little expedition feeling rather out of conceit with my young friend, and I return with those dispositions somewhat aggravated. We find my husband sitting where we left him, placidly smoking and listening to the band.

"Four-and-twenty fiddlers all in a row!"

They have long finished the Uhlanenritt, and are now clashing out a brisk Hussarenritt, in which one plainly hears the hussars' thundering gallop, while the conductor madly waves his arms, as he has been doing unintermittingly for the last two hours.

"You were quite wise," say I, laying my hand on the back of his chair; "you had much the best of it! they were a great imposture!"

"Were they?" he says, taking his cigar out of his mouth, and lifting his handsome and severe iron-gray eyes to mine. "They were farther off than you thought, were not they? I began to think you had not been able to find them."

"Have we been so long?" I say, surprised. "It did not _seem_ long! I suppose we dawdled. We began to talk--bah! it is growing chill! let us go home!"

Mr. Musgrave accompanies us to the entrance to the gardens.

"Good-night, Frank!" cries Sir Roger, as he follows me into the carriage.

As soon as I am in, I recollect that I have ungratefully forgotten to shake hands with my late escort.

"Good-night!" cry I, too, stretching out a compunctious hand, over Sir Roger and the carriage-side. "I am so sorry! I forgot all about you!"

"What hotel are you at?" asks Sir Roger, closing the carriage-door after him. "The Victoria? Oh, yes. We are at the Saxe. You must come and look us up when you have nothing better to do. Our rooms are number--what is it, Nancy? I never can recollect."

"No. 5," reply I. "But, indeed, it is not much use any one coming to call upon us, is it? For we are always out--morning, noon, and night."

With this parting encouragement on my part, we drive off, and leave our young friend trying, with only moderate success, to combine a gracious smile to Sir Roger, with a resentful scowl at me, under a lamp-post. We roll along quickly and easily, through the soft, cool, lamplit night.

"Well, how did you get on with him, Nancy?" asks Sir Roger.

"Good-looking fellow, is not he?"

"Is he?" say I, carelessly. "Yes, I suppose he is, only that I never _can_ admire _dark_ men: I am so glad that all the boys are fair--I should have hated a _black_ brother."

"How do you know that my hair was not coal-black before it turned gray?"

he asks, with a smile. "It may have been the hue of the carrion-crow for all you know."

"I am _sure_ it was not," reply I, stoutly; then, after a little pause, "I do not think that I _did_ get on well with him--not what _I_ call getting on--he seems rather a touchy young gentleman."

"You must not quarrel with him, Nancy," says Sir Roger, laughing. "He lives not a stone's-throw from us."

"So he told me!"

"Poor fellow!" with an accent of compa.s.sion. "He has never had much of a chance; he has been his own master almost ever since he was born--a bad thing for any boy--he has no parents, you know."

"So he told me."

"Neither has he any brothers or sisters."

"So he told me!"