"The rest of _whom_?" asks Roger, but there is such a severity in his eye as he puts the question that it is not too much to say I _dare not_ explain. The one thing hated of Roger's soul--the one thing for which he has no tolerance, and on which he brings to bear all the weight of his righteous wrath, is _scandal_. Not even me will he allow to nibble at a neighbor's fame. "Is she much changed since you saw her last?" pursue I presently, with infantile guilelessness; "was her hair _red_ then? some people say it _used_ to be black!" I raise my eyes to his face as I put this gentle query, in order the better to trace its effect; but the concern that I see in his countenance is so very much greater than any that I had intended to have summoned that I have no sooner hurled my dart than I repent me of having done it. "Nancy!" he says, putting one hand under my chin, and stroking my hair with the other--"am I going to have a _backbiting_ wife? Child! child! there was neither hatred nor malice in the little girl I found sitting at the top of the wall." I do not answer. "Nancy," he says again, in a voice of most thorough earnestness, "I have a favor to ask of you--I know when I put it _that way_, that you will not say 'No;' if you do not mind, I had rather you did not abuse Zéphine Huntley!--for the matter of that, I had rather you did not abuse any one--it does not pay, and there is no great fun in it; but Zéphine _specially_ not." "Why _specially_?" cry I, breathing short and speaking again with a quick, raised voice. "I know that it is a bad plan abusing people, you need not tell me _that_, I know it as well as you do, and I never did it at home, before I married, _never_!--none of them ever accused me of it--I was always quite good-natured about people, _quite_; but why _she specially_? why is she to be more sacred than any one else?" "It is an old story," he answers, passing his hand across his forehead with what looks to me like a rather weary gesture and sighing, "I do not know why I did not tell you before--did not I ever?--no, by-the-by, I remember I never did; well, I will tell you now, and then you will understand!" "Do not!" cry I, passionately, putting my fingers in my ears, and growing scarlet, while the tears rush in mad haste to my eyes, for I imagine that I well know what is coming. "I do not want to hear! I had rather not! I _hate_ old stories." He looks at me in silent dismay. "I mean," say I, seeing that some explanation is needed, "that I know all about it!--I have heard it already! I have been told it." "Been told it? By whom?" "Never mind by whom!" reply I, removing my fingers from my ears, and covering with both hot hands my hotter face. "I _have_ been told it! I _have_ heard it, and, what is more, I _will not hear it again_!" CHAPTER XXXVI.