and with the drawing-room door-handle in my grasp for
half an hour, before I can make up my mind to enter, I take the bull by
the horns, and whisking in suddenly and noisily, find myself
_tete-a-tete_ with my lover.

Certainly, I never felt such a fool in my life. How _awful_ it will be
if I burst out laughing in his face! It is quite as likely as not that I
shall do it out of sheer hysterical fright. Oh, how different! how much
nicer it was when we last parted! I had taken him to see the jackdaw,
and the little bear that Bobby brought from foreign parts; and jacky had
bitten his finger so humorously, and we had been so merry, and I had
told him again how much I wished that he could change places with
father. And now! I _feel_--more than see--that he is drawing nigh me.
Through my eyelids--for I am very sure that I never lift my eyes--I get
an idea of his appearance.

Under his present aspect I am much more disposed to be critical, and to
pick holes in him, than I was under his former one. Any attempt at
youthfulness, any effort at _smartness_, will not escape my vigilant
reprobation--down-eyed and red-cheeked as I appear to be. But none such
do I find. There is no false juvenility--there is no trace of dandyism
in the plain and quiet clothes, in the hair sparsely sprinkled with
snow, in the mature and goodly face.

An iron-gray, middle-aged gentleman stands before me, more vigorous,
more full of healthy life than two-thirds of the puny youth, nourished
on sherry and bitters, of the present small generation, but with no
wish, no smallest effort to take away one from the burden of years that
God has laid on his strong shoulders.

There is no doubt that I shall not speak first, so for a moment there is
a profound silence. Then I find my hot hand in Sir Roger's where it has
so often and so familiarly lain before, and I hear Sir Roger's voice
addressing me.

"I am an old fool, Nancy, and you have come to tell me so?"

Somehow I know that the bronze of his face is a little paled by emotion,
but there is no sawny sentiment in his tone, none of the lover's whine.
It is the same voice--as manly, as sustained--that made comments on
Bobby's little bear. And yet, for the moment, I am physically unable to
answer him. Who _can_ answer the simplest question ever put with a lump
the size of a cocoa-nut in their throat? My eyelids are still hopelessly
drooped over my eyes, but, by some sense that is not eyesight, I am
aware that