"_Drives under the acacias!_" echoes Frank, dropping his accent of sentimentalism, and speaking rather sharply. "We never had any drives under the acacias! We never had any drives at all, that I recollect!" "_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 buttercups 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 grass. "I _hate_ your hints! I hate your innuendoes!" I say, passionately. "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."