Page:Watch and Ward (Boston, Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1878).djvu/61

58 his future, to the uttermost day, could be anything but her future too. One evening, nevertheless, an incident occurred which fatally confounded his calculations,—an evening of perfect mid-spring, full of warm, vague odors, of growing daylight, of the sense of bursting sap and fresh-turned earth. Roger sat on the piazza, looking out on these things with an opera-glass. Nora, who had been strolling in the garden, returned to the house and sat down on the steps of the portico. "Roger," she said, after a pause, "has it never struck you as very strange that we should be living together in this way?"

Roger's heart rose to his throat. But he was loath to concede anything, lest he should concede too much. "It is not especially strange," he said.

"Surely it is strange," she answered. "What are you? Neither my brother, nor my father, nor my uncle, nor my cousin,—nor even, by law, my guardian."

"By law! My dear child, what do you know about law?"

"I know that if I should run away and leave you now, you could not force me to return."

"That 's fine talk! Who told you that?"

"No one; I thought of it myself. As I grow older, I ought to think of such things."

"Upon my word! Of running away and leaving me?"

"That is but one side of the question. The other is that you can turn me out of your house this moment, and no one can force you to take me back. I ought to remember such things."

"Pray what good will it do you to remember them?"

Nora hesitated a moment. "There is always some good in not losing sight of the truth."