“Your secret? Do you really fancy that there is any one in this neighbourhood to whom your secret is still a secret? I'm convinced that the servants have been talking about nothing else for the past fortnight. Jevons, the butler, is too well trained to give any sign, but you may depend upon it that the housemaids nudge each other every time you call. You see, they know that you cannot possibly be calling to see me, and therefore they assume--Psha! what's the need to talk more about it? I can understand everything there is to be understood in this matter, except why you should come to tell me about it. What concern is it of mine?” He looked at her rather reproachfully. He was not accustomed to hear her talk in such a way. She had accustomed him to gentleness and words in which there was no tone of reproach. He felt disappointed in her now. “I felt sure that you would be at least interested in--in”-- “In--shall we call it the wondrous workings of Fate? If you think that I am not interested in Fate you are greatly mistaken.” “I don't like to hear you talk in that strain, Agnes. It jars upon me. You were always so gracious--so sweet.” “How do you know what I was?” “Cannot I remember you long ago?” “I do believe we did meet now and again before you left England. What a memory you have, to be sure!” He rose from his chair and stood beside her. “My dear Agnes,” he said, “I remember all the past. Were ever any two people so unfortunate as we were? I have often wondered if we were really in love with each other. I know that I, for one, fancied that we were. If all had gone well and I had returned at the end of the year I meant to spend at the Zambesi, we--well, we might have got married. But, of course, it would be absurd to fancy that, after so many years.... as I told you when I returned, we are physically different people to-day from what we were some years ago, and in affairs of the heart nature decrees that there is a Statute of Limitations. It would be cruel, as well as unjust, for a man to hold a woman to a compact made nearly nine years before--made, be it remembered, by practically a different woman with a different man. That is why I regarded you as free from every obligation to me. If you had got married after I had been absent for two years, do you fancy that I would have blamed you? Oh no; I have too strong a sense of what is just and reasonable.” “Will you sell your book at thirty-two shillings for the two volumes?” she asked after a long pause. “I read in some paper the other day that people will pay thirty shillings for a book, if they want it, quite as readily as they will pay ten.” He was too startled to be able to reply to her. The inconsequence of her question was certainly startling. After the lapse of a minute, however, he had sufficiently recovered himself to be able to say: