He makes no answer, but, lifting his hat, begins to walk quickly away. For a hundred yards I allow him to go unrecalled; then, as I note his quickly-diminishing figure and the heavy mists beginning to fold him, my resolution fails me; I take to my heels and scamper after him. "Stop!" say I, panting as I come up with him, "I dare say--perhaps--you _thought_ you were speaking truth!--there must, must be some _mistake_!" He does not answer, but still walks quickly on. "Tell me!" cry I, posting on alongside of him, breathless and distressed--"when was it? where did you hear it? how long ago?" "I never heard it?" "Yes, you did," cry I, passionately, asseverating what I have so lately and passionately denied. "You know you did; but when was it? how was it? where was it?" "It was _nowhere_," he answers with a cold, angry smile. "I was _drawing the long bow_!" I stop in baffled rage and misery. I stand stock-still, with the long, dying grass wetly and limply clasping my ankles. To my surprise he stops too. "I wish you were _dead_!" I say tersely, and it is not a figure of speech. For the moment I do honestly wish it. "Do you?" he answers, throwing me back a look of hardly inferior animosity; "I dare say I do not much mind." A little pause, during which we eye each other, like two fighting-cocks. "Even if I _were_ dead," he says, in a low voice--"mind, I do not blame you for wishing it--sometimes I wish it myself--but even if I _were_, I do not see how that would hinder Sir Roger and Mrs. Huntley from corresponding." "They _do not_ correspond," cry I, violently; "it is a falsehood!" Then, with a quick change of thought and tone: "But if they do, I--I--do not mind! I--I--am very glad--if Roger likes it! There is no harm in it." "Not the slightest." "Do you _always_ stay at home?" cry I, in a fury, goaded out of all politeness and reserve by the surface false acquiescence of his tone; "do you _never_ go away? I _wish_ you would! I wish"--(speaking between laughing and crying)--"that you could take your abbey up on your back, as a snail does its shell, and march off with it into another county." "But unfortunately I cannot." "What have I done to you?" I cry, falling from anger to reproach, "that you take such delight in hurting me? You can be pleasant enough to--to other people. I never hear you hinting and sneering away any one else's peace of mind; but as for me, I never--_never_ am alone with you that you do not leave me with a pain--a tedious long ache _here_"--(passionately clasping my hands upon my heart). "Do not I?"--(Then half turning away in a lowered voice)--"_nor you me_!" "_I!_" repeat I, positively laughing in my scorn of this accusation. "_I_ hint! _I_ imply! why, I _could_ not do it, if I were to be shot for it! it is not _in_ me!" He does not immediately answer; still, he is looking aside, and his color changes.