Tarrant pursued. 'What route
should you suggest?'

She was right, after all. He wished to convict her of ignorance. Her
cheeks were now burning, beyond a doubt, and she felt revengeful.

'I advise you to make inquiries at a shipping-office,' was her distant
reply.

'It seems'--he was smiling at Nancy--'I shall have to go to New York,
and then take the Cuba mail.'

'Are you going to join your friend in business?'

'Business, I fear, is hardly my vocation.'

There was a tremor on Nancy's lips, and about her eyelids. She said
abruptly:

'I thought you were perhaps in business?'

'Did you? What suggested it?'

Tarrant looked fixedly at her; in his expression, as in his voice, she
detected a slight disdain, and that decided her to the utterance of the
next words.

'Oh'--she had assumed an ingenuous air--'there's the Black Lead that
bears your name. Haven't you something to do with it?'

She durst not watch him, but a change of his countenance was distinctly
perceptible, and for the moment caused her a keen gratification.
His eyes had widened, his lips had set themselves; he looked at once
startled and mortified.

'Black lead?' The words fell slowly, in a voice unlike that she had been
hearing. 'No. I have nothing to do with it.'

The silence was dreadful. Nancy endeavoured to rise, but her limbs would
not do their office. Then, her eyes fixed on the grass, she became aware
that Tarrant himself had stood up.

'Where are the children?' he was saying absently.

He descried them afar off with Miss. Morgan, and began to saunter in
that direction. As soon as his back was turned, Nancy rose and began to
walk towards the house. In a few moments Jessica and the girls were with
her.

'I think we must go,' she said.

They entered, and took leave of Mrs. Baker, who sat alone in the
drawing-room.

'Did you say good-bye to Mr. Tarrant?' Jessica asked, as they came forth
again.

'Yes.'

'I didn't. But I suppose it doesn't matter.'

Nancy had thought of telling her friend what she had done, of boasting
that she had asked the impossible question. But now she felt ashamed of
herself, and something more than ashamed. Never again could she enter
this garden. And it seemed to her that, by a piece of outrageous, of
wanton, folly, she had for ever excluded herself from the society of all
'superior' people.

CHAPTER 7

'Now, _I_ look at it in this way. It's to celebrate the fiftieth year
of the reign of Qu