All this time we are posting along in mad haste. Thank God! the high-road is in sight, the cheerful, populous, light high-road. The trees grow thinner, and the path broadens. Even from here, we can plainly see the carts and carters. He stops, and making me stop, too, snatches both my hands. "Nancy!" he says, harshly, stooping over me, while his eyes flame with a haggard light. "Yes, I _will_ call you so this once--to me now you _are_ Nancy! I will _not_ call you by _his_ name! Is it _possible_? You may say that it is my egotism; but, at a moment like this, what is the use of shamming--of polite pretense? Never, _never_ before in all my life have I given love without receiving it, and I _cannot_ believe"--(with an accent of passionate entreaty)--"that I do now! Feeling for you as I do, do you feel absolutely _nothing_ for me?" "_Feel_!" cry I, driven out of all moderation by disgust and exasperation. "Would you like to know how I feel? I feel _as if a slug had crawled over me_!" His face contracts, his eyes darken with a raging pain. He _throws_ my hands--the hands a moment ago so jealously clasped--away from him. "Thank you!" he says, after a pause, in a stiff voice of constraint. "I am satisfied!" "And a very good thing too!" say I, sturdily, still at boiling-point, and diminishing with quick steps the small space still intervening between me and the road. "Stay!" he says, overtaking me once again, as I reach it, and laying his hand in detention on my arm. "One word more! I should be sorry to part from you--such friends as we have been"--(with a sneer)--"without _one_ good wish. Lady Tempest, I hope"--(smiling with malevolent irony)--"that your fidelity will be rewarded as it deserves." "I have no doubt of it!" reply I, steadily; but even as I speak, a sharp jealous pain runs through my heart. Thank God! he cannot see it! CHAPTER XXXI. Yes, here out in the open it is still quite light; it seems two hours earlier than it did below in the dark dingle--light enough as plainly to see the faces of those one meets as if it were mid-day. I suppose that my late companion and I were too much occupied by our own emotions to hear, or at least notice the sound of wheels approaching us; but no sooner have I turned and left him, before I have gone three paces, than I am quickly passed by an open carriage and pair of grays--_quickly_, and yet slowly enough for me to recognize the one occupant. As to her--for it is Mrs. Huntley--she must have seen me already, as I stood with Mr. Musgrave on the edge of the wood, exchanging our last bitter words. It is impossible that she could have helped it; but even had it been possible--had there been any doubt on the subject, that doubt would be removed by the unusual animation of her attitude, and the interest in her eyes, that I have time to notice, as she rolls past me.