s she said--

"No, indeed, Mr. Godfrey, that's not known to me, and I have very good
reasons for thinking different. But if it's true, I don't wish to hear
it."

"Would you never forgive me, then, Nancy--never think well of me, let
what would happen--would you never think the present made amends for
the past? Not if I turned a good fellow, and gave up everything you
didn't like?"

Godfrey was half conscious that this sudden opportunity of speaking to
Nancy alone had driven him beside himself; but blind feeling had got
the mastery of his tongue. Nancy really felt much agitated by the
possibility Godfrey's words suggested, but this very pressure of
emotion that she was in danger of finding too strong for her roused all
her power of self-command.

"I should be glad to see a good change in anybody, Mr. Godfrey," she
answered, with the slightest discernible difference of tone, "but it
'ud be better if no change was wanted."

"You're very hard-hearted, Nancy," said Godfrey, pettishly. "You might
encourage me to be a better fellow. I'm very miserable--but you've no
feeling."

"I think those have the least feeling that act wrong to begin with,"
said Nancy, sending out a flash in spite of herself. Godfrey was
delighted with that little flash, and would have liked to go on and
make her quarrel with him; Nancy was so exasperatingly quiet and firm.
But she was not indifferent to him _yet_, though--

The entrance of Priscilla, bustling forward and saying, "Dear heart
alive, child, let us look at this gown," cut off Godfrey's hopes of a
quarrel.

"I suppose I must go now," he said to Priscilla.

"It's no matter to me whether you go or stay," said that frank lady,
searching for something in her pocket, with a preoccupied brow.

"Do _you_ want me to go?" said Godfrey, looking at Nancy, who was now
standing up by Priscilla's order.

"As you like," said Nancy, trying to recover all her former coldness,
and looking down carefully at the hem of her gown.

"Then I like to stay," said Godfrey, with a reckless determination to
get as much of this joy as he could to-night, and think nothing of the
morrow.

CHAPTER XII

While Godfrey Cass was taking draughts of forgetfulness from the sweet
presence of Nancy, willingly losing all sense of that hidden bond which
at other moments galled and fretted him so as to mingle irritation with
the very sunshine, Godfrey's wife was walking with slow uncertain steps
through the s