Suddenly I start up. Some one is approaching me: some one has thrown himself with careless freedom on the couch beside me. It is Algy. Having utterly failed in dislodging Mr. Parker from his cushion--having had a suggestion on his part, on the treatment of the gnat-bite, passed over in silent contempt--he has retired from the circle in dudgeon. "This is lively, is not it?" he says, in an aggressively loud voice, as if he were quarrelsomely anxious to be overheard. I say "Hush!" apprehensively. "As no one makes the slightest attempt to entertain _us_, we must entertain each other, I suppose!" "Yes, dear old boy!" I say, affectionately, "why not?--it would not be the first time by many." "That does not make it any the more amusing!" he says, harshly.--"I say, Nancy"--his eyes fixing themselves with sullen greediness on the central figure of the group he has left--on the slight round arm (after all, not half so round or so white as Barbara's or mine)--which is still under treatment, "_is_ eau de cologne good for those sort of bites?--her arm _is_ bad, you know!" "_Bad!_" echo I, scornfully; "_bad!_ why, I am _all_ lumps, more or less, and so is Barbara! who minds _us_!" "You ought to make your old man--'_auld Robin Gray_'--mind you," he says, with a disagreeable laugh. "It is _his_ business, but he does not seem to see it, does he? ha! ha!" "I _wish_!" cry I, passionately; then I stop myself. After all, he is hardly himself to-night, poor Algy! "By-the-by," he says, presently, with a wretchedly assumed air of carelessness, "is it true--it is as well to come to the fountain-head at once--is it true that _once_, some time in the dark ages, he--he--thought fit to engage himself to, to _her_?" (with a fierce accent on the last word). A pain runs through my heart. Well, that is nothing new nowadays. He too has heard it, then. "I do not know!" I answer, faintly. "What! he has not told you? _Kept it dark!_ eh?" (with the same hateful laugh). "He has kept nothing dark!" I answer, indignantly. "One day he began to tell me something, and I stopped him! I would not hear; I did not want to hear, I believe; I am sure that they are--only--only--old friends." "_Old friends!_" he echoes, with a smile, in comparison of which our host's satyr-leer seems pleasant and chaste. "_Old friends!_ you call yourself a woman of the world" (indeed I call myself nothing of the kind), "you call yourself a woman of the world, and believe _that_! They looked like _old friends_ at dinner to-day, did not they? A little less than kin, and more than kind! Ha! ha!" CHAPTER XLIV.