sinuatingly, "I believe we shall
get on better still. I am sure that poor people are fonder of one
another than rich ones--they have less to distract them from each
other."

I have now raised my head, and perceive that Sir Roger does not look
very much convinced.

"But granting that poverty _is_ better than riches, do you believe that
it _is_, Nancy?--for my part I doubt it--for myself I will own to you
that I have found it pleasant not to be obliged to look at sixpence upon
both sides; but _that_," he says with straightforward simplicity, "is
perhaps because I have not long been used to it--because once, long ago,
I wanted money badly--I would have given my right hand for it, and could
not get it!"

"What did you want it for?" cry I, curiously, pricking my ears, and for
a moment forgetting my private troubles in the hope of a forthcoming
anecdote.

"Ah! would not you like to know?" he says, playfully, but he does not
explain: instead, he goes on: "Even granting that it is so, do you think
it would be very manly to let a fine estate run to ruin, because one was
too lazy to look after it? Do you think it would be quite
_honest_--quite fair to those that will come after us?"

"_Those that will come after us!_" cry I, scornfully, making a face for
the third and last time this morning. "And who are they, pray? Some
sixteenth cousin of yours, I suppose?"

"Nancy," he says, gravely, but in a tone whose gentleness takes all
harshness from the words, "you are talking nonsense, and you know as
well as I do that you are!"

Then I know that I may as well be silent. After a pause:

"And when," say I, in as lamentable a voice as King Darius sent down
among the lions in search of Daniel--"how soon, I mean, are we to set
off?"

"_We!_" he cries, a sudden light springing into his eyes, and an accent
of keen pleasure into his voice. "Do you mean to say that _you_ thought
of coming too?"

I look up in surprise.

"Do not wives generally go with their husbands?"

"But would you _like_ to come?" he asks, seizing my hands, and pressing
them with such unconscious eagerness, that my wedding-ring makes a red
print in its neighbor-finger.

O friends, I wish to Heaven that I had told a lie! It would have been, I
am sure, one of the cases in which a lie would have been
justifiable--nay, praiseworthy, too. But, standing there, under the
truth of his eyes, I have to be true, too.

"Like!" say I, evasively, casting down my eyes, a