"And you are _alone_--Sir Roger has left you quite _alone_ here?" "Yes," say I, lachrymosely; "is not it _dreadful_? I never was so miserable in my life; I do not think I _ever_ was by myself for a _whole_ night before, and"--(lowering my voice to a nervous whisper)--"they tell me there is a ghost somewhere about. Did you ever hear of it?--and the furniture gives _such_ cracks!" "And--he has gone _by himself_?" he continues, still harping on the same string, as if unable to leave it. "Yes," reply I, laconically, hanging my head, for this is a topic on which I feel always guilty, and never diffuse. "H'm!" he says, ruminatingly, and as if addressing the remark more to himself than to me. "I suppose it _is_ difficult to get out of old habits, and into new ones, all of a sudden." "I do not know what you mean by old habits and new habits," cry I, angrily; "if you think he did not want me to go with him, you are very much mistaken; he would have much rather that I had." "But _you_," looking at me penetratingly, and speaking with a sort of alacrity, "you did not see it? I remember of old" (with a smile) "your abhorrence of the sea." "You are wrong again," say I, reddening, and still speaking with some heat, "I _wished_ to go--I begged him to take me. However sick I had been, I should have liked it better than being left moping here, without a soul to speak to!" Silence for a moment. Then he speaks with a rather sarcastic smile. "I confess myself puzzled; if _you_ were dying to go, and _he_ were dying to take you, how comes it that you are sitting at the present moment on this bench?" I can give no satisfactory answer to this query, so take refuge in a smile. "I see," say I, tartly, "that you have still your old trick of asking questions. I wish that you would try to get the better of it; it is very disadvantageous to you, and very trying to other people!" He takes this severe set-down in silence. The trees that surround the garden are slowly darkening. The shadows that intervene between the round masses of the sycamore-leaves deepen, deepen. A bat flitters dumbly by. Vick, to whose faith all things seem possible, runs sharply barking and racing after it. We both laugh at the fruitlessness of her undertaking, and the joint merriment restores suavity to me, and assurance to him. "And are you to stay here by yourself _all_ the time he is away--_all_?" "God forbid!" reply I, with devout force. "Not? well, then--I am really afraid this is a question again, but I cannot help it. If you will not volunteer information, I must ask for it--who is to be your companion?" "I suppose they will take turns," say I, relapsing into dejection, as I think of the precarious nature of the society on which I depend; "sometimes one, sometimes another, whichever can get away best--they will take turns."