uld have been on the lookout for you."

"You had, of course, entirely forgotten so insignificant a fact?" he
says, with a tone of pique.

That happy one! how well I recollect it! I feel quite fondly toward it;
it reminds me so strongly of the Linkesches Bad, of the brisk band, and
of Roger smoking and smiling at me with his gray eyes across our
Mai-trank.

"Yes," I say, contritely, "I am ashamed to say I had--_quite_; but you
see I have had a good many things to think of lately."

At this point it strikes me that he must have forgotten that he has my
hand, so I quietly, and without offense, resume it.

"And you are _alone_--Sir Roger has left you quite _alone_ here?"

"Yes," say I, lachrymosely; "is not it _dreadful_? I never was so
miserable in my life; I do not think I _ever_ was by myself for a
_whole_ night before, and"--(lowering my voice to a nervous
whisper)--"they tell me there is a ghost somewhere about. Did you ever
hear of it?--and the furniture gives _such_ cracks!"

"And--he has gone _by himself_?" he continues, still harping on the same
string, as if unable to leave it.

"Yes," reply I, laconically, hanging my head, for this is a topic on
which I feel always guilty, and never diffuse.

"H'm!" he says, ruminatingly, and as if addressing the remark more to
himself than to me. "I suppose it _is_ difficult to get out of old
habits, and into new ones, all of a sudden."

"I do not know what you mean by old habits and new habits," cry I,
angrily; "if you think he did not want me to go with him, you are very
much mistaken; he would have much rather that I had."

"But _you_," looking at me penetratingly, and speaking with a sort of
alacrity, "you did not see it? I remember of old" (with a smile) "your
abhorrence of the sea."

"You are wrong again," say I, reddening, and still speaking with some
heat, "I _wished_ to go--I begged him to take me. However sick I had
been, I should have liked it better than being left moping here, without
a soul to speak to!"

Silence for a moment. Then he speaks with a rather sarcastic smile.

"I confess myself puzzled; if _you_ were dying to go, and _he_ were
dying to take you, how comes it that you are sitting at the present
moment on this bench?"

I can give no satisfactory answer to this query, so take refuge in a
smile.

"I see," say I, tartly, "that you have still your old trick of asking
questions. I wish that you would try to get the better of it; it is very