The moment I have done it, I repent. _However_ red I was, _however_ confused I looked, it would have been better to have remained and faced him. For several minutes there is silence. I look out at the stiff comeliness of the variously tinted asters, at the hoary-colored dew that is like a film along the morning grass. I do not know what _he_ looks at, because I have my back to him, but I think he is looking at Barbara's note again. At least, I judge this by what he says next--"Poor little soul!" (in an accent of the honestest, tenderest pity), "how happy she seems!" "Ah!" say I, with a bitter little laugh, "she will mend of _that_, will not she?" He does not echo my mirth; indeed, I think I hear him sigh. "'Romances paint at full length people's wooings, But only give a bust of marriages!'" say I, in soft quotation, addressing rather myself and my thoughts than my companion. He has joined me; he, too, is looking out at the serene aster-flowers, at the glittering glory of the dew. "Since when you have learned to quote 'Don Juan?'" he asks, with a sort of surprise. "Since _when_?" I reply, with the same tart playfulness--"oh! since I married! I date all my accomplishments from then!--it is my anno Domini." Another silence. Then Sir Roger speaks again, and this time his words seem as slow and difficult of make as mine were just now. "Nancy!" he says, in a low voice, not looking at me, but still facing the flowers and the sunshiny autumn sward, "do you believe that--that--_this fellow_ cares about her really?--she is too good to be made--to be made--a mere _cat's-paw_ of!" "A _cat's-paw_!" cry I, turning quickly round with raised voice; the blood that so lately retired from it rushing again headlong all over my face; "I do not know--what you mean--what you are talking about!" He draws his breath heavily, and pauses a moment before he speaks. "God knows," he says, looking solemnly up, "that I had no wish to broach this subject again--God knows that I meant to have done with it forever--but now that it has been forced against my will--against both our wills--upon me, I must ask you this one question--tell me, Nancy--tell me truly _this_ time"--(with an accent of acute pain on the word "_this_")--"can you say, _on your honor--on your honor_, mind--that you believe this--this man loves Barbara, as a man should love his wife?" If he had worded his interrogation differently, I should have been sorely puzzled to answer it; as it is, in the form his question takes, I find a loop-hole of escape. "As a man should love his wife?" I reply, with a derisive laugh, "and how is that? I do not think I quite know!--very dearly, I suppose, but not quite so dearly as if she were his neighbor's--is that it?"