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!".