Is this the beginning of a like change in Roger?
A spasm of jealous agony, of angry despair, contracts my heart as I think this.
"Well, are all Mr.Huntley's debts paid ?" I ask, trying to speak in a tone of sprightly ease; "is there a good hope of his coming back soon ?" "Not yet a while; in time, perhaps, he may." Still there is not a vestige of a smile on his face.

He does not look at me as he speaks; his eyes are on the long, dead knots of the colorless grass at his feet; in his expression despondency and preoccupation strive for supremacy.
"Have you made your head ache ?" I say, gently stealing my hand into his; "there is nothing that addles the brains like muddling over accounts, is there ?" _Am_ I awake?
_Can_ I believe it?
He has dropped my hand, as if he disliked the touch of it.
"No, thanks, no.

I have no headache," he answers, hastily.
Another little silence.

We are marching quickly along, as if our great object were to get our _tete-a-tete_ over.

As we came, we dawdled, stood still to listen to the lark, to look at the wool-soft cloud-heaps piled in the west--on any trivial excuse indeed; but now all these things are changed.
"Did you talk of business _all_ the time ?" I ask, by-and-by, with timid curiosity.
It is _not_ my fancy; he does plainly hesitate.
"Not quite _all_," he answers, in a low voice, and still looking away from me.
"About _what_, then ?" I persist, in a voice through whose counterfeit playfulness I myself too plainly hear the unconquerable tremulousness; "may not I hear ?--or is it a secret ?" He does not answer; it seems to me that he is considering what response to make.
"Perhaps," say I, still with a poor assumption of lightness and gayety, "perhaps you were talking of--of old times." He laughs a little, but _whose_ laugh has he borrowed?
in that dry, harsh tone there is nothing of my Roger's mellow mirth! "Not we; old times must take care of themselves; one has enough to do with the new ones, I find." "Did she--did she say any thing to you about--about _Algy_, then ?"--hesitatingly.
"We did not mention his name." There is something so abrupt and trenchant in his tone that I have not the spirit to pursue my inquiries any further.