I nod. I have judiciously placed myself with my back to the light, so that, if that exasperating flood of crimson bathe my face--and bathe it it surely will--is not it coming now?--do not I feel it creeping hotly up?--it may be as little perceptible as possible. "It must be a great, great _surprise_ to you!" he says, interrogatively, and still with that sound of extreme and baffled wonder in his tone. "Immense!" reply I. I speak steadily if low; and I look determinedly back in his face. Whatever color my cheeks are--I believe they are of the devil's own painting--I feel that my eyes are honest. He has picked up the note, and is reading it again. "She seems to have no doubt"--(with rising wonder in face and voice)--"as to its greatly pleasing _you_!" "So it would have done at one time," I answer, still speaking (though no one could guess with what difficulty), with resolute equanimity. "And does not it now?" (very quickly, and sending the searching scrutiny of his eyes through me). "I do not know," I answer hazily, putting up my hand to my forehead. "I cannot make up my mind, it all seems so sudden." A pause. Roger has forgotten the partridges. He is sunk in reflection. "Was there ever any talk of this before?" he says, presently, with a hesitating and doubtful accent, and an altogether staggered look. "Had you any reason--any ground for thinking that he cared about her?" "Great ground," reply I, touching my cheeks with the tips of my fingers, and feeling, with a sense of self-gratulation, that their temperature is gradually, if slowly, lowering, "_every_ ground--at _one_ time!" "At _what_ time!" "In the autumn," say I, slowly; my mind reluctantly straying back to the season of my urgent invitations, of my pressing friendlinesses, "and at Christmas, and after Christmas." "Yes?" (with a quick eagerness, as if expecting to hear more). "The boys," continue I, speaking without any ease or fluency, for the subject is always one irksome and difficult to me, "the boys took it quite for granted--looked upon it as a certain thing that he meant seriously until--" "Until what?" (almost snatching the words out of my mouth). "Until--well!" (with a short, forced laugh), "until they found that he did not." "And--do you know?--but of course you do--can you tell me how they discovered that?" He is looking at me with that same greedy anxiety in his eyes, which I remember in our last fatal conversation about Musgrave. "He went away," reply I, unable any longer to keep watch and ward over my countenance and voice, rising and walking hastily to the window.