"I know him! I should think so: he is quite a tame cat here."
"Yes?"
"Have you any children?" cry I, suddenly, bundling with my usual fine tact head-foremost into the conversation (where I am clearly not wanted, and altogether forgetting Barbara's warning injunction) with my unnecessary and malapropos query. For a moment she looks only astonished; then an expression of pain crosses her face, and a slight contraction passes over her features. Evidently, she had a child, and it is dead. She is going to cry! At this awful thought, I grow scarlet, and Algy darts a furious look at me. What have I said? I have outdone myself. How far worse a case than the fugitive wife whose destiny I was so resolute to learn from her injured husband!
"I am so sorry," I stammer—"I never thought—I did not know—"
"It is of no consequence," she answers, speaking with some difficulty, and with a slight but quite musical tremor in her voice—very different from the ugly gulpings and catchings of the breath which always set off my tears—"but the fact is, that I have one little one—and—and—she no longer lives with me; my husband's people have taken her; I am sure that they meant it for the best; only—only—I am afraid I cannot quite manage to talk of her yet" (turning away from me, and looking up into Algy's face with a showery smile). Then, as if unable to run the risk of any other further shock to her feelings, she rises and takes her leave; Algy eagerly attending her to the door.
The old deaf gentleman departs at the same time, loading Barbara with polite parting messages to her husband, and bowing distantly to me. Algy reënters presently, looking cross and ruffled.
"You really are too bad, Nancy!" he says, harshly, throwing himself into the chair lately occupied by Mrs. Huntley. "You grow worse every day—one would think you did it on purpose—riding rough-shod over people's feelings."
I stand aghast. Formerly, I used not to mind rough words; but I think Roger must have spoilt me; they make me wince now.
"But—but—it was not dead!" I say, whimpering; "it had only gone to visit its grandmother."
"Never you mind, my Nancy!" says Barbara, in a whisper, drawing me away to the window, and pressing her soft, cool lips, to the flushed misery of my cheeks; "she was not hurt a bit! her eyes were as dry as a bone!"