Pronouncing these words with slow and formal emphasis, as if he meant something dreadful, Horace marched solemnly to his German exercise, and sat down to it once more. The evening grew darker round the two; by degrees Susan's head drooped down on her needlework, till you could see that she had been seized by a womanish panic, and was secretly putting up the linen on her knee to wipe her wet eyes. This terror and compunction worked its way silently as the early wintry night came on. By-and-by, through the quietness, which was broken only by Horace's pen, the ashes from the grate, and a slow patter outside of the wet which dropped from the eaves, there broke a little hurried, suppressed sob. Then Susan's white work, more distinct than herself in the twilight, went down suddenly upon the floor, and a darkling figure glided round to Horace's side. "Oh, don't think of it any more!" cried Susan; "it was only my ill-temper. Oh, Horace, never mind me!--don't think of it again." "Think of what?" said Horace, peevishly; "what on earth do you mean, thrusting your arms about me? I did not ask to be petted, did I?--what do you mean?" "Oh, Horace--what we were saying," said his sister, with humility. "What were we saying? Can I remember all the nonsense you talk?" cried the young man, shaking off her arms with impatience--"can't you keep to your own business, and let me alone? Oh, you wanted me to be Whittington and the cat, didn't you?--thank you, that's not my vocation. Isn't it bad enough I must stand your sauciness, without standing your repentance--oh, for mercy's sake, go away!" Susan went away without another word, gathered her work into her big work-bag, and went out of the room, not without making it sufficiently audible that she had closed the door. "He's a coward! he does nothing but talk!" she said between her teeth, as she went up the dark stairs; but nobody save herself knew that her momentary passion had brought these words to Susan's lips, and ten minutes after she would not have believed she had said them--nevertheless, sometimes passion, unawares, says the truth. CHAPTER II.