Nancy Part 32

"_You_ had not, I dare say," reply I, carelessly, "but _we_ had. They are the things that I look back at with the greatest pleasure of any thing that happened there!"

Frank does not apostrophize as "_dear_" any other public resort; indeed, he turns away his head, and we walk on without uttering a word for a few moments.

"By-the-by," say I, with a labored and not altogether successful attempt at appearing to speak with suddenness and want of premeditation, "what did you mean this morning, about that la--about Mrs. Huntley?"

"I meant nothing," he answers, but the faint quiver of a smile about his mouth contradicts his words.

"That is not true!" reply I, with impatient brusqueness; "why were you surprised at my not having heard of her?"

"I was not surprised."

"What is the use of so many falsehoods?" cry I, indignantly; "at least I would choose some better time than when I was going to church for telling them. What reason have you for supposing that--that Roger knows more about her than I--than Barbara do?"

"How persistent you are!" he says, with that same peculiar smile--not latent now, but developed--curbing his lips and lightening in his eyes.

"There is no baffling you! Since you dislike falsehoods, I will tell you no more. I will own to you that I made a slip of the tongue; I took it for granted that you had been told a certain little history, which it seems you have _not_ been told."

The blood rushes headlong to my face. It feels as if every drop in my body were throbbing and tingling in my cheeks, but I look back at him hardily.

"I don't believe there _is_ any such history."

"I dare say not."

More silence. Swish through the b.u.t.tercups and the yellow rattle; a lark, miles above our heads, singing the music he has overheard in heaven. Frank does not seem inclined to speak again.

"Your story is _not_ true," say I, presently, laughing uncomfortably, and unable to do the one wise thing in my reach, and leave the subject alone--"but untrue stories are often amusing, more amusing than the true ones. You may tell yours, if you like."

"I have not the slightest wish."

A few steps more. How quickly we are getting through the park! We shall reach the church, and I shall not have heard. I shall sit and stand and kneel all through the service with the pain of that gnawing curiosity--that hateful new vague jealousy aching at my heart.

It is _impossible_! I stop. I stand stock-still in the summer gra.s.s.

"I _hate_ your hints! I hate your innuendoes!" I say, pa.s.sionately. "I have always lived with people who spoke their thoughts straight out!

Tell me this moment! I will not move a step from this spot till you do."

"I have nothing worth speaking of to tell," he answers, slightly. "It is only that never having had a wife myself, I have taken an outsider's view; I have taken it for granted that when two people marry each other they make a clean breast of their past history--make a mutual confession of their former--"

He pauses, as if in search of a word.

"But supposing," cry I, eagerly, "that they have nothing to tell, nothing to confess--"

He shrugs his shoulders.

"That is so likely, is it not?"

"Likely or not," cry I, excitedly, "it was true in _my_ case. If you had put me on the rack, I could have confessed nothing!"

"I do not see the a.n.a.logy," he answers, coldly; "_you_ are--what did you tell me? nineteen?--It is to be supposed"--(with a rather unlovely smile)--"that your history is yet to come; and he is--_forty-seven_! We shall be late for church!"--with a glance at Algy's and Barbara's quickly diminishing figures.

"I do not care whether we are late or not!" cry I, vehemently, and stamping on the daisy-heads as I speak. "I will not _stir_ until you tell me."

"There is really no need for such excitement!" returns he with a cold smile; "since you will have it, it is only that rumor--and you know what a liar _rumor_ is--says that once, some years ago, they were engaged to marry each other."

"And why did not they?" speaking with breathless panting, and forgetting my stout a.s.severation that the whole tale is a lie.

"Because--mind, I _vouch_ for nothing, I am only quoting rumor again--because--she threw him over."

"_Threw him over!_" with an accent of most unfeigned astonishment.

"You are surprised!" he says, quickly, and with what sounds to me like a slightly annoyed inflection of voice; "it _does_ seem incredible, does not it? But at that time, you see, he had not all the desirables--not quite the pull over other men that he has now; his brother was not dead or likely to die, and he was only General Tempest, with nothing much besides his pay."

"_Threw--him--over!_" repeat I, slowly, as if unable yet to grasp the sense of the phrase.

"We shall _certainly_ be late; the last bell is beginning," says Frank, impatiently.

I move slowly on. We have reached the turnstile that gives issue from the park to the road. The smart farmers' wives, the rosy farmers'

daughters, are pacing along through the powdery dust toward the church-gate.

"Is she a _widow_?" ask I, in a low voice.

He laughs sarcastically.

"A widow indeed, and desolate, eh? No! I believe she has a husband somewhere about, but she keeps him well out of sight--away in the colonies. He is there now, I fancy."

"And why is not she with him?" cry I, indignantly; but the moment that the words are out of my mouth, I hang my head. Might not _she_ ask the same question with regard to _me_?

"She did not like the _sea_, perhaps," answers Frank, demurely.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A day--two days pa.s.s.

"More callers," say I, hearing the sound of wheels, and running to the window; "I thought we _must_ have exhausted the neighborhood yesterday and the day before!" I add, sighing.

"_Whoever they are_," says Barbara, anxiously, lifting her head from the work over which it is bent, "mind you do not ask after their relations!

Think of the man whose wife you inquired after, and found that she had run away with his groom not a month before!"

"That certainly was one of my unlucky things," answer I, gravely; then, beginning to laugh--"and I was so _determined_ to know what had become of her, too."

I am still looking out. It is a soft, smoke-colored day; half an hour ago, there was a shower--each drop a separate loud patter on the sycamore-leaves--but now it is fair again. A victoria is coming briskly up the drive; servants in dark liveries; a smoke-colored parasol that matches the day.

"Shall I ring, and say 'not at home?'" asks Barbara, stretching out her hand toward the bell.

"No, no!" cry I, hurriedly, in an altered voice, for the parasol has moved a little aside, and I have seen the face beneath.