"If you had rather talk, I will not."
"I am afraid," say I, with a sour laugh, "that you have not kept much conversation for home use! I suppose you exhausted it all, this morning, at Laurel Cottage!"
He passes his hand slowly across his forehead.
"Perhaps!—I do not think I am in a very talking vein."
"By-the-by," say I, my heart beating thick, and with a hurry and tremor in my voice, as I approach the desired yet dreaded theme, "you have never told me what it was, besides Mr. Huntley's debts, that you talked of this morning!—you owned that you did not talk of business quite all the time!"
"Did I?"
He has forgotten his book now; across the flame of the candles, he is looking full and steadily at me.
"When I asked you, you said it was not about old times?—of course—" (laughing acridly)—"I can imagine your becoming illimitably diffuse about them, but you told me, that, 'No,' you did not mention them."
"I told truth."
"You also said," continue I, with my voice still trembling, and my pulses throbbing, "that it was not Algy that you were discussing!—if I had been in your place, I could, perhaps, have found a good deal to say about him; but you told me that you never mentioned him."