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Agatha's Husband: A Novel

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik · English · Gutenberg #21767 · 802,732 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Agatha's Husband: A Novel

Author: Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

Illustrator: Walter Crane


        
Release date: June 8, 2007 [eBook #21767]
                Most recently updated: August 17, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21767

Credits: David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AGATHA'S HUSBAND: A NOVEL ***




AGATHA'S HUSBAND

A NOVEL

By The Author Of

'John Halifax, Gentleman'

DINAH MARIA CRAIK,
AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock

With Illustrations By Walter Crane

Macmillan And Co.

1875


INSCRIBED TO M, P.,

IN

MEMORIAL OF THE FRIENDSHIP OF A LIFETIME

1852.



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

The husband's farewell

“She began leisurely to read”

“Will you accept it, with my love?”

Arrival at Kingcombe Holm

On horseback

Along the road




AGATHA'S HUSBAND.




CHAPTER I.

--If there ever was a woman thoroughly like her name, it was Agatha
Bowen. She was good, in the first place--right good at heart, though
with a slight external roughness (like the sound of the g in her name),
which took away all sentimentalism. Then the vowels--the three broad
rich a's--which no one can pronounce with nimini-pimini closed lips--how
thoroughly they answered to her character!--a character in the which was
nothing small, mean, cramped, or crooked.

But if we go on unfolding her in this way, there will not be the
slightest use in writing her history, or that of one in whom her life is
beautifully involved and enclosed--as every married woman's should be--

He was still in clouded mystery--an individual yet to be; and two other
individuals had been “talking him over,” feminine-fashion, in Miss
Agatha Bowen's drawing-room, much to that lady's amusement and
edification. For, being moderately rich, she had her own suite of rooms
in the house where she boarded; and having no mother--sorrowful lot for
a girl of nineteen!--she sometimes filled her drawing-room with very
useless and unprofitable acquaintances. These two married ladies--one
young, the other old--Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Thornycroft--had been for the
last half-hour vexing their very hearts out to find Agatha a husband--a
weakness which, it must be confessed, lurks in the heart of almost every
married lady.

Agatha had been laughing at it, alternately flushing up or looking
scornful, as her mouth had a natural propensity for looking; balancing
herself occasionally on the arm of the sofa, which, being rather small
and of a light figure, she could do with both impunity and grace; or
else rushing to the open window, ostensibly to let her black kitten
investigate street-sights from its mistress's shoulder. Agatha was very
much of a child still, or could be when she chose.

Mrs. Hill had been regretting some two or three “excellent matches” of
which she felt sure Miss Bowen had thrown away her chance; and young
Mrs. Thornycroft had tried hard to persuade her dearest Agatha how very
much happier she would be in a house of her own, than as a boarder even
in this excellent physician's family. But Agatha only laughed on, and
devoted herself more than ever to the black kitten.

She was, I fear, a damsel who rather neglected the _bienséances_ of
life. Only, in her excuse, it must be allowed that her friends were
doing what they had no earthly business to do; since; if there is one
subject above all upon which a young woman has a right to keep her
thoughts, feelings, and intentions to herself, and to exact from others
the respect of silence, it is that of marriage. Possibly, Agatha Bowen
was of this opinion.

“Mrs. Hill, you are a very kind, good soul: and Emma Thornycroft, I like
you very much; but if--(Oh! be quiet, Tittens!)--if you could manage to
let me and 'my Husband' alone.”

These were the only serious words she said--and they were but half
serious; she evidently felt such an irresistible propensity to laugh.

“Now,” continued she, turning the conversation, and putting on a
dignified aspect, which occasionally she took it into her head to
assume, though more in playfulness than earnest--“now let me tell you
who you will meet here at dinner to-day.”

“Major Harper, of course.”

“I do not see the 'of course' Mrs. Thornycroft,” returned Agatha,
rather sharply; then, melting into a smile, she added: “Well, 'of
course,' as you say; what more likely visitor could I have than my
guardian?”

“Trustee, my dear; guardians belong to romances, where young ladies are
always expected to hate, or fall in love with them.”

Agatha flushed slightly. Now, unlike most girls, Miss Bowen did not look
pretty when she blushed; her skin being very dark, and not over clear,
the red blood coursing under it dyed her cheek, not “celestial, rosy
red,” but a warm mahogany colour. Perhaps a consciousness of this
deepened the unpleasant blushing fit, to which, like most sensitive
people at her age, she was always rather prone.

“Not,” continued Mrs. Thornycroft, watching her,--“not that I think any
love affair is likely to happen in your case; Major Harper is far too
much of a settled-down bachelor, and at the same time too old.”

Agatha pulled a comical face, and made a few solemn allusions to
Methuselah. She had a peculiarly quick, even abrupt manner of speaking,
saying a dozen words in the time most young ladies would take to drawl
out three; and possessing, likewise, the rare feminine quality of never
saying a word more than was necessary.

“Agatha, how funny you are!” laughed her easily-amused friend. “But,
dear, tell me who else is coming?” And she glanced doubtfully down on a
gown that looked like a marriage-silk “dyed and renovated.”

“Oh, no ladies--and gentlemen never see whether one is dressed in
brocade or sackcloth,” returned Agatha, rather maliciously;--“only,
'old Major Harper' as you are pleased to call him, and----”

“Nay, I didn't call him very old--just forty, or thereabouts--though he
does not look anything like it. Then he is so handsome, and, I must say,
Agatha, pays you such extreme attention.”

Agatha laughed again--the quick, light-hearted laugh of nineteen--and
her brown eyes brightened with innocent pleasure.

Young Mrs. Thornycroft again looked down uneasily at her dress--not from
overmuch vanity, but because her hounded mind recurred instinctively
from extraneous or large interests to individual and lesser ones.

“Is there really any one particular coming, my dear? Of course, _you_
have no trouble about evening dress; mourning is such easy comfortable
wear.” (Agatha turned her head quickly aside.) “That handsome silk
of yours looks quite well still; and mamma there,” glancing at the
contentedly knitting Mrs. Hill--“old ladies never require much dress;
but if you had only told me to prepare for company----”

“Pretty company! Merely our own circle--Dr. Ianson, Mrs. Ianson, and
Miss Ianson--you need not mind outshining her now----”

“No, indeed! I am married.”

“Then the 'company' dwindles down to two besides yourselves; Major
Harper and his brother.”

“Oh! What sort of a person is the brother?”

“I really don't know; I have never seen him. He is just come home from
Canada; the youngest of the family--and I hate boys,” replied Agatha,
running the sentences one upon the other in her quick fashion.

“The youngest of the family--how many are there in all?” inquired the
elder lady, her friendly anxiety being probably once more on matrimonial
thoughts intent.

“I am sure, Mrs. Hill, I cannot tell. I have never seen any of them but
Major Harper, and I never saw him till my poor father died; all which
circumstances you know quite well, and Emma too; so there is no need to
talk a thing twice over.”

From her occasional mode of speech, some people might say, and did say,
that Agatha Bowen “had a temper of her own.” It is very true, she was
not one of those mild, amiable heroines who never can give a sharp word
to any one. And now and then, probably from the morbid restlessness
of unsatisfied youth--a youth, too, that fate had deprived of those
home-ties, duties, and sacrifices, which are at once so arduous and so
wholesome--she had a habit of carrying, not only the real black kitten,
but the imaginary and allegorical “little black dog,” on her shoulder.

It was grinning there invisibly now; shaking her curls with short
quick motion, swelling her rich full lips--those sort of lips which are
glorious in smiles, but which in repose are apt to settle into a gravity
not unlike crossness.

She was looking thus--not her best, it must be allowed--when a servant,
opening the drawing-room door, announced “Visitors for Miss Bowen.”

The first who entered, very much in advance of the other, appeared with
that easy, agreeable air which at once marks the gentleman, and one long
accustomed to the world in all its phases, especially to the feminine
phase; for he bowed over Agatha's hand, and smiled in Agatha's now
brightening face, with a sort of tender manliness, that implied his
being used to pleasing women, and having an agreeable though not an
ungenerous consciousness of the fact.

“Are you better--really better? Are you quite sure you have no cold
left? Nothing to make your friends anxious about you?” (Agatha shook her
head smilingly.) “That's right; I am so glad.”

And no doubt Major Harper was; for a true kind-heartedness, softened
even to tender-heartedness, was visible in his handsome face. Which face
had been for twenty years the admiration of nearly every woman in every
drawing-room he entered: a considerable trial for any man. Now and then
some independent young lady, who had reasons of her own for preferring
rosy complexions, turn-up noses, and “runaway” chins, might quarrel
with the Major's fine Roman profile and jet-black moustache and hair;
but--there was no denying it--he was, even at forty, a remarkably
handsome man; one of the old school of Chesterfield perfection, which is
fast dying out.

Everybody liked him, more or less; and some people--a few men and not a
few women, had either in friendship or in warmer fashion--deeply
loved him. Society in general was quite aware of this; nor, it must be
confessed, did Major Harper at all attempt to disprove or ignore the
fact. He wore his honours--as he did a cross won, no one quite knew
how, during a brief service in the Peninsula--neither pompously nor
boastingly, but with the mild indifference of conscious desert.

All this could be at once discerned in his face, voice, and manner;
from which likewise a keen observer might draw the safe conclusion that,
though a decided man of fashion, and something of a dandy, he was above
either puppyism or immorality. And Agatha's rich Anglo-Indian father had
not judged foolishly when he put his only child and her property in the
trust of, as he believed, that rare personage, an honest man.

If the girl Agatha, who took honesty as a matter of course in every
gentleman, endowed this particular one with a few qualities more than he
really possessed, it was an amiable weakness on her part, for which,
as Major Harper would doubtless have said with a seriously troubled
countenance, “no one could possibly blame _him._”

In speaking of the Major we have taken little notice--as little, indeed,
as Agatha did--of the younger Mr. Harper.

“My brother, Miss Bowen. He came home when my sister Emily died.” The
brief introduction terminated in a slight fall of voice, which made the
young lady look sympathisingly at the handsome face that took shades of
sadness as easily as shades of mirth. In her interest for the Major she
merely bowed to his brother; just noticed that the stranger was a tall,
fair “boy,” not at all resembling her own friend; and after a polite
speech or two of welcome, to which Mr. Harper answered very briefly,
she hardly looked at him again until she and her guests adjourned to the
family drawing-room of Dr. Ianson.

There, the Major happening to be engrossed by doing earnest politeness
to Mrs. Thornycroft and her mother, Agatha had to enter side by side
with the younger brother, and likewise to introduce him to the worthy
family whose inmate she was.

She did so, making the whole circuit of the room towards Miss Jane
Ianson, in the hope that he would cast anchor, or else be grappled by
that young lady, and so she should get rid of him. However, fate was
adverse; the young gentleman showed no inclination to be thus put aside,
and Miss Bowen, driven to despair, was just going to extinguish him
altogether with some specimen of the unceremonious manner which she
occasionally showed to “boys,” when, observing him more closely, she
discovered that he could not exactly come under this category.

His fair face, fair hair, and thin, stripling-like figure, had deceived
her. Investigating deeper, there was a something in his grave eye
and firmly-set mouth which bespoke the man, not the boy. Agatha, who,
treating him with a careless womanly superiority that girls of nineteen
use, had asked “how long he had been in Canada?” and been answered
“Fifteen years,”--hesitated at her next intended question--the very rude
and malicious one--“How old he was when he left home?”

“I was, as you say, very young when I quitted England,” he answered, to
a less pointed remark of Miss Ianson's. “I must have been a lad of nine
or ten--little more.”

Agatha quite started to think of the disrespectful way in which she
had treated a gentleman twenty-five years old! It made her shy and
uncomfortable for some minutes, and she rather repented of her habit of
patronising “boys.”

However, what was even twenty-five? A raw, uncouth age. No man was
really good for anything until he was thirty. And, as quickly as
courtesy and good feeling allowed her, she glided from the uninteresting
younger brother to the charmed circle where the elder was talking away,
as only Major Harper could talk, using all the weapons of conversation
by turns, to a degree that never can be truly described. Like Taglioni's
_entrechats_, or Grisi's melodious notes, such extrinsic talent dies on
the senses of the listener, who cannot prove, scarcely even explain, but
only say that it was so. Nevertheless, with all his power of amusing, a
keen observer might have discerned in Major Harper a want of depth--of
reading--of thought; a something that marked out the man of society
in contradiction to the man of intellect or of letters. Had he been an
author--which he was once heard to thank Heaven he was not--he would
probably have been one of those shallow, fashionable sentimentalists
who hang like Mahomed's coffin between earth and heaven, an eyesore unto
both. As it was, his modicum of talent made him a most pleasant man in
his own sphere--the drawing-room.

“Really,” whispered the good, corpulent Dr. Ianson, who had been
laughing so much that he quite forgot dinner was behind time, “my dear
Miss Bowen, your friend is the most amusing, witty, delightful person.
It is quite a pleasure to have such a man at one's table.”

“Quite a pleasure, indeed,” echoed Mrs. Ianson, deeply thankful to
anything or anybody that stood in the breach between herself, her
husband, and the dilatory cook.

Agatha looked gratified and proud. Casting a shy glance towards where
her friend was talking to Emma Thornycroft and Miss Ianson, she met
the eye of the younger brother. It expressed such keen, though
grave observance of her, that she felt her cheeks warm into the old,
unbecoming, uncomfortable blush.

It was rather a satisfaction that, just then, they were summoned
to dinner; Major Harper, in his half tender, half paternal manner,
advancing to take her downstairs; which was his custom, when, as
frequently happened, Agatha Bowen was the woman he liked best in the
room. This was indeed his usual way in all societies, except when out of
kindliness of heart he now and then made a temporary sacrifice in favour
of some woman who he thought liked _him_ best. Though even in this case,
perhaps, he would not have erred, or felt that he erred, in offering his
arm to Agatha.

She looked happy, as any young girl would, in receiving the attentions
of a man whom all admired; and was quite contented to sit next to him,
listening while he talked cheerfully and brilliantly, less for her
personal entertainment than that of the table in general. Which she
thought, considering the dulness of the Ianson circle, and that even her
own kind-hearted, long-known friend, Emma Thornycroft, was not the most
intellectual woman in the world,--showed great good nature on the part
of Major Harper.

Perhaps the most silent person at table was the younger brother, whose
Christian name Agatha did not know. However, hearing the Major call
him once or twice by an odd-sounding word, something like “Beynell” or
“Ennell,” she had the curiosity to inquire.

“Oh, it is N. L.--his initials; which I call him by, instead of the
very ugly name his cruel godfathers and godmothers imposed upon him as a
life-long martyrdom.”

“What name is that?” asked Agatha, looking across at the luckless victim
of nomenclature, who seemed to endure his woes with great equanimity.

He met her eye, and answered for himself, showing he had been listening
to her all the time. “I am called Nathanael--it is an old family
name--Nathanael Locke Harper.”

“You don't look very like a Nathanael,” observed his neighbour, Mrs.
Thornycroft, doubtless wishing to be complimentary.

“I think he does,” said Agatha, kindly, for she was struck by the
infinitely sweet and “good” expression which the young man's face just
then wore. “He looks like the Nathanael of Scripture, 'in whom there
was no guile.'”

A pause--for the Iansons were those sort of religious people who think
any Biblical allusions irreverent. But Major Harper said, heartily,
“That's true!” and cordially, nay affectionately, pressed Agatha's
hand. Nathanael slightly coloured, as if with pleasure, though he made
no answer of any kind. He was evidently unused to bandy either jests or
compliments.

If anything could be objected to in a young man so retiring and
unobtrusive as he, it was a certain something the very opposite of
his brother's cheerful frankness. His features, regular, delicate, and
perfectly colourless; his hair long, straight, and of the palest brown,
without any shadow of what painters would call a “warm tint,” auburn or
gold, running through it; his slow, quiet movements, rare speech, and a
certain passive composure of aspect, altogether conveyed the impression
of a nature which, if not positively repellant, was decidedly cold.

Agatha felt it, and though from the rule of opposites, this species of
character awoke in her a spice of interest, yet was the interest of too
faint and negative a kind to attract her more than momentarily.

In her own mind she set down Nathanael Harper as “a very odd sort of
youth”--(_a youth_ she still persisted in calling him)--and turned
again to his brother.

They had dined late,--and the brief evening bade fair to pass as
after-dinner evenings do. Arrived in the drawing-room, old Mrs. Hill
went to sleep; Miss Ianson, a pale young woman, in delicate health,
disappeared; Mrs. Ianson and Mrs. Thornycroft commenced a low-toned,
harmless conversation, which was probably about “servants” and “babies.”
 Agatha being at that age when domestic affairs are very uninteresting,
and girlish romance has not yet ripened into the sweet and solemn
instincts of motherhood, stole quietly aside, and did the very rude
thing of taking up a book and beginning to read “in company.” But, as
before stated, Miss Agatha had a will of her own, which she usually
followed out, even when it ran a little contrary to the ultra-refined
laws of propriety.

The book not being sufficiently interesting, she was beginning, like
many another clever girl of nineteen, to think the society of married
ladies a great bore, and to wonder when the gentlemen would come
up-stairs. Her wish was shortly gratified by the door's opening--but
only to admit the “youth” Nathanael.

However, partly for civility, and partly through lack of entertainment,
Agatha smiled upon even him, and tried to make him talk.

This was not an easy matter, since in all qualities he seemed to be
his elder brother's opposite. Indeed, his reserve and brevity of speech
emulated Agatha's own; so they got on together ill enough, until by some
happy chance they lighted on the subject of Canada and the Backwoods.
Where is there boy or girl of romantic imagination who did not, at
some juvenile period of existence, revel in descriptions of American
forest-life? Agatha had scarcely passed this, the latest of her various
manias; and on the strength of it, she and Mr. Harper became more
sociable. She even condescended to declare “that it was a pleasure to
meet with one who had absolutely seen, nay, lived among red Indians.'”

“Ay, and nearly died among them too,” added Major Harper, coming up so
unexpectedly that Agatha had not noticed him. “Tell Miss Bowen how you
were captured, tied to the stake, half-tomahawked, etc.--how you lived
Indian fashion for a whole year, when you were sixteen. Wonderful lad! A
second Nathaniel Bumppo!” added he, tapping his brother's shoulder.

The young man drew back, merely answered “that the story would not
interest Miss Bowen,” and retired, whether out of pride or shyness it
was impossible to say.

The conversation, taken up and led, as usual, by Major Harper, became
a general disquisition on the race of North American Indians.
Accidentally, or not, the elder brother drew from the younger many
facts, indicating a degree of both information and experience which
made every one glance with surprise, respect, and a little awe, on the
delicate, boyish-looking Nathanael.

Once, too, Agatha took her turn as an object of interest to the rest.
They were all talking of the distinctive personal features of that
strange race, which some writers have held to be the ten lost tribes of
Israel. Agatha asked what were the characteristics of an Indian face,
often stated to be so fine?

“Look in the mirror, Miss Bowen,” said Nathanael, joining in the
conversation.

“What do you mean?”

I mean, that were you not an Englishwoman, I should have thought you
descended from a Pawnee Indian--all except the hair. The features are
exact--long, almond-shaped eyes, aquiline nose, mouth and chin of the
rare classic mould, which these children of nature keep, long after it
has almost vanished out of civilised Europe. Then your complexion, of
such a dark ruddy brown--your----”

“Stop--stop!” cried the Major, heartily laughing. “Miss Bowen will think
you have learnt every one of her physical peculiarities off by
heart already. I had not the least idea you were gifted with so much
observation.”

“Nay, do let him go on; it amuses me,” cried the young girl, laughing,
though she could not help blushing a little also.

But Nathanael had “shrunk into his shell,” as his brother humorously
whispered to Agatha, and was not to be drawn out for the remainder of
the evening.

The Harpers left early, thus affording great opportunity for their
characters being discussed afterwards. Every lady in the room had long
since declared herself “in love” with the elder brother; the fact was
now repeated for the thousandth time, together with one or two remarks
about the younger Harper, who they agreed was rather nice-looking, but
so eccentric!

Miss Bowen scarcely thought about Nathanael at all; except that, after
she was in bed, a comical recollection floated through other more
serious ones, and she laughed outright at the notion of being considered
like a Pawnee Indian!




CHAPTER II.

Of all the misfortunes incidental to youth (falling in love included),
there are few greater than that of having nothing to do. From this
trial, Agatha Bowen, being unhappily a young lady of independent
property, suffered martyrdom every day. She had no natural ties, duties,
or interests, and was not sufficiently selfish to create the like in and
about her own personality. She did not think herself handsome enough to
be vain, so had not that sweet refuge of feminine idleness--dress. Nor,
it must be dolefully confessed, was she of so loving a nature as to love
anybody or everybody, as some women can.

Kind to all, and liking many, she was apparently one of those characters
who only really _love_ two or three people in the whole course of their
existence. To such, life is a serious, perilous, and often terrible
journey.

“Well, Tittens, I don't know, really, what we are to do with ourselves
this morning,” said Agatha, talking aloud to her Familiar, the black
kitten, who shared the solitude of her little drawing-room. “You'd like
to go and play downstairs, I dare say? It's all very nice for you to be
running after Mrs. Ianson's wools, but I can't see anything amusing in
fancy-work. And as for dawdling round this square and Russell Square
with Jane Ianson and Fido--pah! I'd quite as soon be changed into a
lapdog, and led along by a string. How stupid London is! Oh, Tittens,
to think that you and I have never lived in the country since we were
born. Wouldn't you like to go? Only, then we should never see
anybody----”

The foolish girl paused, and laughed, as if she did not like to
soliloquise too confidentially, even to a kitten.

“Which of them did you like the best last night, Tittens? One was not
over civil to you; but Nathanael--yes, certainly you and that juvenile
are great friends, considering you have met but four evenings. All in
one week, too. Our house is getting quite gay, Miss Tittens; only it is
so much the duller in the mornings. Heigho!

“Life's a weary, weary, weary,
Life's a weary coble o' care.”

“What's the other verse? And she began humming:

“Man's a steerer, steerer, steerer,
Man's a steerer--life is a pool.”

“I wonder, Tittens, how you and I shall steer through it? and whether
the pool will be muddy or clear?”

Twisting her fingers in and about her pet's jetty fur, Agatha sat
silent, until slowly there grew a thoughtful shadow in her eyes, a
forewarning of the gradual passing away of that childishness, which in
her, from accidental circumstances, had lasted strangely long.

“Come, we won't be foolish, Tittens,” cried she, suddenly starting up.
“We'll put on our bonnets, and go out--that is, one of us will, and the
other may take to Berlin wool and Mrs. Ianson.”

The bonnet was popped on quickly and independently--Miss Bowen scorned
to indulge in the convenience or annoyance of a lady's-maid. Crossing
the hall, the customary question, “Whether she would be home to dinner?”
 stopped her.

“I don't know--I am not quite sure. Tell Mrs. Ianson not to wait for
me.”

And she passed out, feeling keener than usual the consciousness that
nobody would wait for her, or look for her, or miss her; that her
comings in and goings out were perfectly indifferent to every human
being in the house, called by courtesy her “home.” Perhaps this was her
own fault, but she could not help it. It was out of her nature to get up
an interest among ordinary people, where interests there were none.

Little more had she in the house whither she was going to pay one of her
extempore visits; but then there was the habit of old affection, begun
before characters develop themselves into the infinite variety from
which mental sympathy is evolved. She could not help liking Emma
Thornycroft, her sole childish acquaintance, whose elder sister had been
Agatha's daily governess, until she died.

“I know Emma will be glad to see me, which is something; and if she does
tire me with talk about the babies, why, children are better than Berlin
wool. And there is always the piano. Besides, I must walk out, or I
shall rust to death in this horrible Bedford Square.”

She walked on, rather in a misanthropic mood, a circumstance to her not
rare. But she had never known mother, sister, or brother; and the
name of father was to her little more than an empty sound. It had
occasionally come mistily over the Indian Ocean, in the shape of formal
letters--the only letters that ever visited the dull London house where
she spent her shut-up childhood, and acquired the accomplishments of her
teens. Mr. Bowen died on the high seas: and when his daughter met the
ship at Southampton, a closed black coffin was all that remained to her
of the name of father. That bond, like all others, was destined to be to
her a mere shadow. Poor Agatha!

Quick exercise always brings cheerfulness when one is young, strong,
and free from any real cares; Agatha's imaginary ones, together with the
vague sentimentalisms into which she was on the verge of falling, yet
had not fallen, vanished under the influence of a cheerful walk on a
sunny summer's day. She arrived at Mrs. Thornycroft's time enough to
find that admirable young matron busied in teaching to her eldest boy
the grand mystery of dining; that is, dining like a Christian, seated
at a real table with a real silver knife and fork. These latter Master
James evidently preferred poking into his eyes and nose, rather than his
mouth, and evinced far greater anxiety to sit on the table than on the
chair.

“Agatha, dear--so glad to see you!” and Emma's look convinced even
Agatha that this was true. “You will stay, of course! Just in time to
see James eat his first dinner, like a man! Now Jemmie, wipe his pretty
mouth, and then give Auntie Agatha a sweet kiss.”

Agatha submitted to the kiss, though she did not quite believe in the
adjective; and felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that the title of
“Auntie” was a mere compliment. She did not positively dislike children,
else she would have been only half a woman, or a woman so detestable as
to be an anomaly in creation; but her philoprogenitiveness was, to say
the least, dormant at present; and her sense of infantile beauty being
founded on Sir Joshua's and Murillo's cherubs, she had no great fancy
for the ugly little James.

She laid aside her bonnet, and smoothing her curls in the nursery
mirror, looked for one minute at her Pawnee-Indian face, the sight of
which now often made her smile. Then she sat down to lunch with Emma and
the children; being allowed, as a great favour, to be placed next Master
James, and drink with him out of his silver mug. Miss Bowen accepted the
offered honour calmly, made no remark, but--went thirsty.

For an hour or two she sat patiently listening to what had gone on in
the house since she was there---how baby had cut two more teeth, and
James had had a new braided frock--(which was sent for that she might
look at it)--how Missy had been to her first children's party, and was
to learn dancing at Midsummer, if papa could be coaxed to agree.

“How is Mr. Thornycroft?” asked Agatha.

“Oh, very well--papa is always well. I only wish the little ones took
after him in that respect.”

Agatha, who was old enough to remember Emma engaged, and Emma newly
married, smiled to think how entirely the lover beloved and the
all-important young husband had dwindled into a mere “Papa;” liked and
obeyed in a certain fashion, for Emma was a good wife, but evidently
made a very secondary consideration to “the children.”

The young girl--as yet neither married, nor in love--wondered if this
were always so. She often had such wonderings and speculation when she
came to Emma's house.

She was growing rather tired of so much domestic information, and had
secretly taken out her watch to see how many hours it would be to dinner
and to Mr. Thornycroft, a sensible, intelligent man, who from love to
his wife had been always very kind to his wife's friends--when there
came the not unwelcome sound of a knock at the hall-door.

“Bless me; that is surely the Harpers. I had quite forgotten Major
Harper and the bears.”

“An odd conjunction,” observed Agatha, smiling.

“Major Harper, who yesterday, for the fifth time, promised to take Missy
to the Zoological Gardens to see the bears. He has remembered it at
last.”

No, he had not remembered it; it would have been a very remarkable
circumstance if he had; being a person so constantly full of
engagements, for himself and others. The visitor was only his younger
brother, who had often daundered in at Mrs. Thornycroft's house,
possibly from a liking to Emma's friendly manner, or because, cast
astray for a fortnight on the wide desert of London, he had, like
Agatha, “nothing to do.”

If Nathanael had other reasons, they, of course, never came near the
surface, but lay buried under the silent waters of his quiet mind.

Agatha was half pleased, half disappointed at seeing him. Mrs.
Thornycroft, good soul, was always charmed to have a visitor, for
her society did not attract many. Only betraying, as usual, what was
uppermost in her simple thoughts, she could not long conceal her regret
concerning little Missy and the bears.

To Agatha's great surprise, Mr. Harper, who she thought, in his
dignified gravity, would never have condescended to such a thing,
volunteered to assume his brother's duty.

“For,” said he, with a slight smile, “I have had too many perilous
encounters with wild bears in America, not to feel some curiosity in
seeing a few captured ones in England.”

“That will be charming,” cried Mrs. Thornycroft, looking at him with a
mixture of respect and maternal benignity. “Then you can tell Missy all
those wonderful stories, only don't frighten her.”

“Perhaps I might She seems rather shy of me.” And the adventurous young
gentleman eyed askance a small be-ribboned child, who was creeping about
the room and staring at him. “Would it not be better if----”

“If mamma went?”

“There, Missy, don't cry; mamma will go, and Agatha, too, if she would
like it?”

“Certainly,” Miss Bowen answered, with a mischievous glance at
Nathanael. “I ought to investigate bears, if only to prove myself
descended from a Pawnee Indian.”

So, once more, the heavy nut-brown curls were netted up into the crown
of her black bonnet, and her shawl pinned on carelessly--rather too
carelessly for a young woman; since that gracious adornment, neatness,
rarely increases with years. Agatha was quickly ready. In the ten
minutes she had to wait for Mrs. Thornycroft, she felt, more than once,
how much merrier they would have been with the elder than the younger
brother. Also--for Agatha was a conscientious girl--she thought,
seriously, what a pity it was that so pleasant and kind a man as Major
Harper had such an unfortunate habit of forgetting his promises.

Yet she regretted him--regretted his flow of witty sayings that
attracted the humorous half of her temperament, and his touches of
seriousness or sentiment which hovered like pleasant music
round the yet-closed portals of her girlish heart. Until
suddenly--conscientiousness again!--she began to be aware she was
thinking a deal too much of Major Harper; so, with a strong effort,
turned her attention to his brother and the bears.

She had leant on Mr. Harper's offered arm all the way to the Regent's
Park, yet he had scarcely spoken to her. No wonder, therefore, that
she had had time for meditation, or that her comparison between the two
brothers should be rather to Nathanael's disadvantage. The balance of
favour, however, began to right itself a little when she saw how kind
he was to Emma Thornycroft, who alternately screamed at the beasts, and
made foolish remarks concerning them; also, how carefully he watched
over little Missy and James, the latter of whom, with infantile
pertinacity, would poke his small self into every possible danger.

At the sunken den, where the big brown bear performs gymnastic exercises
on a centre tree, Master Jemmie was quite in his glory. He emulated
Bruin by climbing from his feet into nurse's arms--thence into mamma's,
and lastly, much to her discomfiture, into Miss Bowen's. The attraction
being that she happened to stand close to the railing and next to Mr.
Harper, who, with a bun stuck on the end of his long stick, had coaxed
Bruin up to the very top of the tree.

There the creature swayed awkwardly, his four unwieldy paws planted
together, and his great mouth silently snapping at the cakes. Agatha
could hardly help laughing; she, as well as the children, was so much
amused at the monster.

“Mr. Harper, give Missy your cane. Missy would like to feed bear,” cried
the mamma, now very bold, going with her eldest pet to the other side of
the den, and attracting the animal thither.

At which little James, who could not yet speak, setting up a scream of
vexation, tried to stretch after the creature; and whether from his
own impetuosity or her careless hold, sprang--oh, horror!--right out
of Agatha's arms. A moment the little muslin frock caught on the
railing--caught--ripped; then the sash, with its long knotted ends,
which some one snatched at--nothing but the sash held up the shrieking
child, who hung suspended half way over the pit, in reach of the beast's
very jaws.

The bear did not at once see it, till startled by the mother's frightful
cries. Then he opened his teeth--it looked almost like a grin--and began
slowly to descend his tree, while, as slowly, the poor child's sash was
unloosing with its weight.

A murmur of horror ran through the people near; but not a man among them
offered help. They all slid back, except Nathanael Harper.

Agatha felt his sudden gripe. “Hold my hand firm. Keep me in my
balance,” he whispered, and throwing himself over to the whole extent
of his body, and long right arm, managed to catch hold of James, who
struggled violently.

“Hold me tight--tighter still, or we are lost,” said he, trying to
writhe back again; his hand--such a little delicate hand it seemed for a
man--quivering with the weight of the child.

She grasped him frantically--his wrist--his shoulder--nay,--stretching
over, linked her arms round his neck. Something in her touch seemed to
impart strength to him. He whispered, half gasping,--

“Hold me firm, and I'll do it yet, Agatha.” She did not then notice, or
recollect till long afterwards, how he had called her by her Christian
name, nor the tone in which he had said it.

The moment afterwards, he had lifted the child out of the den, and poor
Jemmie was screaming out his now harmless terror safe in the maternal
arms.

Then, and not till then, Agatha burst into tears. Tears which no
one saw, for the mother, hugging her baby, was the very centre of a
sympathising crowd. Mr. Harper, paler than ordinary, leaned against the
stone-work of the den.

“Oh, from what have you saved me?” cried Agatha, as after her
thankfulness for the rescued life, came another thought, personal yet
excusable. “Had Emma lost the child, I should have felt like a murderess
to the day of my death.”

Nathanael shook his head, trying to smile; but seemed unable to speak.

“You have not hurt yourself?”

“Oh no. Very little. Only a strain,” said he as he removed his hand from
his side. “Go to your friend: I will come presently.”

He did come--though not for a good while; and Miss Bowen fancied from
his looks that he had been more injured than he acknowledged; but she
did not like to inquire. Nevertheless he rose greatly in her estimation,
less for his courage than for the presence of mind and common sense
which made it Valuable, and for the self-restraint and indifference
which caused him afterwards to treat the whole adventure as such a
trifling thing.

It was, after all, nothing very romantic or extraordinary, and happened
in such a brief space of time, that probably the circumstance is not
noted in the traditionary chronicles of the Zoological Gardens, which
contain the frightful legend carefully related that day by several
keepers to Mrs. Thornycroft--how a bear had actually eaten up a child,
falling in the same manner into the same den.

But the adventure, slight as it may appear, made a very great and sudden
difference in the slender tie of acquaintanceship, hitherto subsisting
between Agatha and Major Harper's brother. She began to treat Nathanael
more like a friend, and ceased to think of him exactly as a “boy.”

Master James's mamma, when she at last turned her attention from his
beloved small self, was full of thanks to his preserver. Mr. Harper
assured her that his feat was merely a little exertion of muscular
strength, and at last grew evidently uncomfortable at being made so much
of. Returning home with them, he would fain have crept away from the
scene of his honours; but the good-natured, motherly-hearted Emma
implored him to stay.

“We will nurse you if you are hurt, which I am afraid you must be--it
was such a dreadful strain! Oh, Jemmie, Jemmie!” and the poor mother
shuddered.

“Indeed you must come in,” added Miss Bowen kindly, seeing that Emma's
thoughts were floating away, as appeared this time natural enough, to
her own concerns. “You shall rest all the evening, and we will talk to
you, and be very, very agreeable. Pray yield!”

Nathanael argued no more, but went in “quite lamb-like,” as Mrs.
Thornycroft afterwards declared.

This acquiescence in him was little rewarded, Agatha thought--for the
evening happened to be duller even than evenings usually passed at the
Thornycrofts'. The head of the household, being detained in the
City, did not appear; and Mrs. Thornycroft's tongue, unchecked by her
husband's presence, and excited by the event of the afternoon, galloped
on at a fearful rapidity. She poured out upon the luckless young man all
the baby biography of her family, from Missy's christening down to the
infant Selina's cutting of her first tooth. To all of which he listened
with a praiseworthy attention, giving at least silence, which was
doubtless all the answer Emma required.

But Agatha, whose sympathy in these things was, as before said, at
present small, grew half ashamed, half vexed, and finally rather
angry--especially when she saw the pale weariness that gradually
overspread Mr. Harper's face. More than once she hinted that he should
have the armchair, or lie down, or rest in some way; but he took not the
least notice; sitting immovably in his place, which happened to be next
herself, and vaguely looking across the table towards Mrs. Thornycroft.

At nine o'clock, becoming paler than ever, he bestirred himself, and
talked of leaving.

“I ought to be going too. It is not far, and as our roads agree, I will
walk with you,” said Agatha, simply.

He seemed surprised--so much so, that she almost blushed, and would
have retracted, save for the consciousness of her own frank and kindly
purpose. She had watched him closely, and felt convinced that he had
been more injured than he confessed; so in her generous straightforward
fashion, she wanted to “take care of him,” until he was safe at his
brother's door, which she could see from her own. And her solitary
education had been conducted on such unworldly principles, that she
never thought there was anything remarkable or improper in her proposing
to walk home with a young man, whom she knew she could trust in every
way, and who was besides Major Harper's brother.

Nor did even the matronly Mrs. Thornycroft object to the plan--save that
it took her visitors away so early. “Surely,” she added, “you can't be
tired out already.”

Agatha had an ironical answer on the very tip of her tongue: but
something in the clear, “good” eye of Nathanael repressed her little
wickedness. So she only whispered to Emma that for various reasons she
had wished to return early.

“Very well, dear, since you must go, I am sure Mr. Harper will be most
happy to escort you.”

“If not, I hope he will just say so,” added Agatha, very plainly.

He smiled; and his full, soft grey eye, fixed on hers, had an
earnestness which haunted her for many a day. She began heartily to
like Major Harper's brother, though only as his brother, with a sort
of reflected regard, springing from that she felt for her guardian and
friend.

This consciousness made her manner perfectly easy, cheerful, and kind,
even though they were in the perilously sentimental position of two
young people strolling home together in the soft twilight of a Midsummer
evening: likewise occasionally stopping to look westward at a new moon,
which peered at them round street-corners and through the open spaces of
darkening squares. But nothing could make these two at all romantic
or interesting; their talk on the road was on the most ordinary
topics--chiefly bears.

“You seem quite familiar with wild beast life,” Agatha observed. “Were
you a very great hunter?”

“Not exactly, for I never could muster up the courage, or the cowardice,
wantonly to take away life. I don't remember ever shooting anything,
except in self-defence, which was occasionally necessary during the
journeys that I used to make from Montreal to the Indian settlements
with Uncle Brian.”

“Uncle Brian,” repeated Agatha, wondering whether Major Harper had ever
mentioned such a personage, during the two years of their acquaintance.
She thought not, since her memory had always kept tenacious record of
what he said about his relatives--which was at best but little. It
was one of the few things in him which jarred upon Agatha's
feelings--Agatha, to whose isolation the idea of a family and a home was
so pathetically sweet--his seeming so totally indifferent to his own.
All she knew of Major Harper's kith and kin was, that he was the eldest
brother of a large family, settled somewhere down in Dorsetshire.

These thoughts swept through her mind, as Agatha, repeated
interrogatively “Uncle Brian?”

“The same who fifteen years since took me out with him to America; my
father's youngest brother. Has Frederick never told you of him? They two
were great companions once.”

“Oh, indeed!” And Agatha, seeing that Nathanael at least showed no
dislike, but rather pleasure, in speaking of his family, thought she
might harmlessly indulge her curiosity about the Harpers of Dorsetshire.
“And you went away with Mr. Brian Harper, at ten years old. How could
your mother part with you?”

“She was dead--she died when I was born. But I ought to apologise for
thus talking of family matters, which cannot interest you.”

“On the contrary, they do--very much!” cried Agatha; and then blushed
at her own earnestness, at which Nathanael brightened up into positive
warmth.

“How kind you are! how I wish you knew my sisters! It is so pleasant to
me to know them at last, after writing to them and thinking about them
for these many years. How you would like our home--I call it home,
forgetting that I have been only a visitor, and in a short time must go
back to my real home, Montreal.”

“Must you indeed!” And Agatha felt sorry. She had been at once surprised
and gratified by the confidential way in which this usually reserved
young man talked to her, and her alone. “Why do you live in America? I
hate Americans.”

“Do you?” said he, smiling, as if he read her thoughts. “But I have
neither Yankee blood nor education. I was English born; brought up in
British Canada, and by Uncle Brian.”

He spoke the latter words with a certain proud affection, as if his
uncle's mere name were sufficient guarantee for himself. Agatha secretly
wondered what could possibly be the reason that Major Harper had never
even mentioned this personage, whom Nathanael seemed to hold in such
honour.

“Of course,” he continued, “though I dearly like England, though”--and
he sunk his voice a little--“though now it will be doubly hard to go
away, I could never think of leaving Uncle Brian to spend his old age
alone in the country of his adoption.”

“No, no,” returned Agatha, absently, her thoughts still running on this
new Mr. Harper. “What profession is he?”

“Nothing now. He has led an unsettled life--always poor. But he took
care to settle me in a situation under the Canadian Government. We both
think ourselves well to do now.”

Agatha's sense of womanly decorum could hardly keep her from pressing
her companion's arm, in instinctive acknowledgment of his goodness. She
thought his face looked absolutely beautiful.

However, restraining her quick impulses within the bounds of propriety,
she walked on. “And so you will again cross that fearful Atlantic
Ocean?” she said at length, with a slight shudder. The young man saw
her gesture, and looked surprised--nay, gladdened. But nevertheless he
remained silent.

Agatha did the same, for the mention of the sea brought back to her
the one only noteworthy incident of her life, which had given her this
strange antipathy to the sea and to the thought of traversing it. But
this subject--the horrible bugbear of her childhood--she rarely liked
to recur to, even now; so it did not mingle in her conversation with Mr.
Harper.

At last Nathanael said: “I would it were possible--indeed I have often
vainly tried--to persuade Uncle Brian to come back to England. But since
he will not, it is clearly right for me to return to Canada. Anne Valery
says so.”

“Anne Valery!” again repeated Agatha, catching at this second strange
name with which she was supposed to be familiar.

“What, did you never hear of her--my father's ward, my sister's chief
friend--quite one of the family? Is it possible that my brother never
spoke to you of Anne Valery?”

No, certainly not. Agatha was quite sure of that. The circumstance
of Major Harper's having a friend who bore the very suspicious and
romantically-interesting name of Anne Valery could never have slipped
Miss Bowen's memory. She answered Nathanael's question in an abrupt
negative; but all the way through Russell Square she silently pondered
as to who, or what like, Anne Valery could be? finally sketching a
fancy portrait of a bewitching young creature, with blue eyes and golden
hair--the style of beauty which Agatha most envied, because it was most
unlike herself.

Ere reaching Dr. Ianson's door, her attention was called to Mr. Harper,
whose feet dragged so wearily along, that Agatha was convinced that, in
spite of his efforts to conceal it, he was seriously ill. Her womanly
sympathy rose--she earnestly pressed him to come in and consult Dr.
Ianson.

“No--no. Uncle Brian and I always cure ourselves. As he often says, 'A
man after forty is either a doctor or a fool.'”

“But you are only twenty-five.”

“Ay, but I have seen enough to make me often feel like a man of forty,”
 said he, smiling. “Do not mind me. That strain was rather too much; but
I shall be all right in a day or two.”

“I hope so,” cried Agatha, anxiously; “since, did you suffer, I should
feel as if it were all of my causing, and for me.

“Do you think I should regret that?” said the young man, in a tone so
low, that its meaning scarcely reached her. Then, as if alarmed at his
own words, he shook hands with her hastily, and walked down the square.

Agatha thought how different was the abrupt, singular manner of
Nathanael from Major Harper's tender, lingering, courteous adieu.
Nevertheless, she fulfilled her kind purpose towards the young man; and
running to her own window, watched his retreating figure, till her mind
was relieved by seeing him safely enter his brother's door.




CHAPTER III.

A week--nay, more than a week slipped by in the customary monotony of
that large, placidly genteel, Bedford Square house, and Agatha heard
nothing of the house round the corner, which constituted one of the
faint few interests of her existence. Sometimes she felt vexed at the
lengthened absence of her friend and “guardian,” as she persisted in
considering him; sometimes the thought of young Nathanael's pale
face crossed her fancy, awakening both sincere compassion and an
uncomfortable doubt that all might not be going on quite right within
the half-drawn window-blinds, at which she now and then darted a curious
glance.

At last her curiosity or interest rose to such a pitch, that it is to
be feared that Agatha in her independent spirit, and ignorance of, or
indifference to the world, might have committed the terrific
impropriety of making a good-natured inquiry at the door of this
bachelor-establishment. She certainly would, had it consisted only of
the harmless youth Nathanael; but then Major Harper, at the mention of
whose name Mrs. Ianson now began to smile aside, and the invalid Jane to
dart towards Agatha quick, inquisitive looks--No; she felt an invincible
repugnance to knocking, on any pretence, at Major Harper's door.

However, having nothing to do and little to think of, and, moreover,
being under the unwholesome necessity of keeping all her thoughts to
herself, her conjectures grew into such a mountain of discomfort--partly
selfish, partly generous, out of the hearty gratitude which had been
awakened in her towards the younger brother since the adventure with
the bear--that Miss Bowen set off one fine morning, hoping to gain
intelligence of her neighbours by the round-about medium of Emma
Thornycroft.

But that excellent matron had had two of her children ill with some
infantine disease, and had in consequence not a thought to spare for any
one out of her own household. The name of Harper never crossed her lips
until Agatha, using a safe plural, boldly asked the question, “Had Emma
seen anything of them?”

Mrs. Thornycroft could not remember.--Yes, she fancied some one had
called--Mr. Harper, perhaps; or no, it must have been the Major, for
somebody had said something about Mr. Nathanael's being ill or out of
town. But the very day after that the measles came out on James, and
poor little Missy had just been moved out of the night-nursery into the
spare bed-room, etc. etc. etc.

The rest of Emma's information concerning her babies was, as they say
in the advertisements of lost property, “of no value to anybody but the
original owner.”

Agatha bestowed a passing regret on young Nathanael, whether he were ill
or out of town; she would have liked to have seen more of him. But that
Major Harper should contrive to saunter up to the Regent's Park to visit
the Thornycrofts, and never find time to turn a street-corner to say
“How d'ye do” to _her_! she thought neither courteous nor kind.

There was little inducement to spend the day with Emma, who, in her
present mood and the state of her household, was a mere conversational
Dr. Buchan--a walking epitome of domestic medicine. So Miss Bowen
extended her progress; took an early dinner with Mrs. Hill, and stayed
all the afternoon at that good old lady's silent and quiet lodgings,
where there was neither piano nor books, save one, which Agatha
patiently read aloud for two whole hours--“The life of Elizabeth Fry.”
 A volume uninteresting enough to a young creature like herself, yet
sometimes smiting her with involuntary reflections, as she contrasted
her own aimless, useless existence with the life of that worthy
Quakeress--the prison-angel.

Having tired herself out, first with reading and then with singing--very
prosy and lengthy ballads of the old school, which were the ditties Mrs.
Hill always chose--Agatha departed much more cheerful than she came.
So great strength and comfort is there in having something to do,
especially if that something happens to be, according to the old
nursery-rhyme--

Not for ourself, but our neighbour.

Another day passed--which being rainy, made the Doctor's dull house seem
more inane than ever to the girl's restless humour. In the evening, at
his old-accustomed hour, Major Harper “dropped in,” and Agatha forgot
his sins of omission in her cordial welcome. Very cordial it was, and
unaffected, such as a young girl of nineteen may give to a man of forty,
without her meaning being ill-construed. But under it Major Harper
looked pathetically sentimental and uncomfortable. Very soon he moved
away and became absorbed in delicate attentions towards the sick and
suffering Jane Ianson.

Agatha thought his behaviour rather odd, but generously put upon it
the best construction possible--viz. his known kind-heartedness. So she
herself went to the other side of the invalid couch, and tried to make
mirth likewise.

Asking after Mr. Harper, she learnt that her friend had been acting as
sick-nurse, to his brother for some days.

“Poor fellow--he will not confess that he is ill, or what made him so.
But I hope he will be about again soon, for they are anxiously expecting
him in Dorsetshire. Nathanael is the 'good boy' of our family, and as
worthy a creature as ever breathed.”

Agatha smiled with pleasure to see the elder brother waxing so
generously warm; but when she smiled, Major Harper sighed, and cast his
handsome eyes another way. All the evening he scarcely talked to her
at all, but to Mrs. and Miss Ianson. Agatha was quite puzzled by this
pointed avoidance, not to say incivility, and had some thoughts
of plainly asking him if he were vexed with her; but womanly pride
conquered girlish frankness, and she was silent.

After tea their quartett was broken by a visitor, whom all seemed
astonished to see, and none more so than Major Harper.

“Why, Nathanael, I thought you were safely disposed of with your sofa
and book. What madness makes you come out to-night?”

“Inclination, and weariness,” returned the other, indifferently, as,
without making more excuses or apologies, he dragged himself to the
arm-chair, which Miss Bowen good-naturedly drew out for him, and slipped
into the circle, quite naturally.

“Well, wilful lads must have their way,” cried his brother, “and I am
only too glad to see you so much better.”

With that the flow of the Major's winning conversation recommenced; in
which current all the rest of the company lay like silent pebbles, only
too happy to be bubbled round by such a pleasant and refreshing stream.

The younger Harper sat in his arm-chair, leaning his forehead on his
hand, and from under that curve now and then looking at them all,
especially Agatha.

At a late hour the brothers went away, leaving Mrs. and Miss Ianson in
a state of extreme delight, and Miss Bowen in a mood that, to say the
least, was thoughtful--more thoughtful than usual.

After that lively evening followed three dull days, consisting of
a solitary forenoon, an afternoon walk through the squares, dinner,
backgammon, and bed; the next morning, _de capo al fine_, and so on; a
dance of existence as monotonous as that of the spheres, and not half so
musical. On the fourth day, while Miss Bowen was out walking, Nathanael
Harper called to take leave before his journey to Dorsetshire. He stayed
some time, waiting Agatha's return, Mrs. Ianson thought; but finally
changed his mind, and made an abrupt departure, for which that young
lady was rather sorry than otherwise.

The fifth day, Emma Thornycroft appeared, and, strange to say, without
any of her little ones; still stranger, without many references to them
on her lips, except the general information that they were all getting
well now.

The busy woman evidently had something on her mind, and plunged at once
_in médias res_.

“Agatha, dear, I came to have a little talk with you.”

“Very well,” said Agatha smiling; calmly and prepared to give up her
morning to the discussion of some knotty point in dress or infantile
education. But she soon perceived that Emma's pretty face was too
ominously important for anything short of that gravest interest of
feminine life--matrimony; or more properly in this case--match-making.

“Agatha, love,” repeated Emma, with the affectionate accent that was
always quite real, but which now deepened under the circumstances of
the case, “do you know that young Northen has been speaking to Mr.
Thornycroft about you again.”

“I am very sorry for it,” was the short answer.

“But, my dear, isn't it a great pity that you could not like the young
man? Such a good young man too, and with such a nice establishment
already. If you could only see his house in Cumberland Terrace--the real
Turkey carpets, inlaid tables, and damask chairs.”

“But I can't marry carpets, tables, and chairs.”

“Agatha, you are _so_ funny! Certainly not, without the poor man
himself. But there is no harm in him, and I am sure he would make an
excellent husband.”

“I sincerely hope so, provided he is not mine. Come, Tittens, tell Mrs.
Thornycroft what _you_ think on the matter,” cried the wilful girl,
trying to turn the question off by catching her little favourite. But
Emma would not thus be set aside. She was evidently well primed with a
stronger and steadier motive than what usually occupied and sufficed her
easy mind.

“Ah, how can you be so childish! But when you come to my age”---

“I shall, in a few more years. I wonder if I shall be as young-looking
as you, Emma?” This was a very adroit thrust on the part of Miss Agatha,
but for once it failed.

“I hope and trust so, dear. That is, if you have as good a husband as
I have. Only, be he what he may, he cannot be such another as my dear
James.”

Agatha internally hoped he might not; for, much as she liked and
respected Emma's good spouse, her ideal of a husband was certainly not
Mr. James Thornycroft.

“Tell me,” continued the anxious matron, keeping up the charge--“tell
me, Agatha, do you ever intend to marry at all?

“Perhaps so; I can't say. Ask Tittens!”

“Did you ever think in earnest of marrying? And”--here with an air of
real concern Emma stole her arm round her friend's waist--“did you ever
see anybody whom you fancied you could like, if he asked you?”

Agatha laughed, but the colour was rising in her brown cheek. “Tut, tut,
what nonsense!”

“Look at me, dear, and answer seriously.”

Agatha, thus hemmed in, turned her face full round, and said, with
some dignity, “I do not know, Emma, what right you have to ask me that
question.”

“Ah, it is so; I feared it was,” sighed Emma, not in the least offended.
“I often thought so, even before he hinted----”--

“Who hinted--and what?”

“I can't tell you; I promised not. And of course you ought not to know.
Oh, dear, what am I letting out!” added poor Mrs. Thornycroft, in much
discomfiture.

“Emma, you will make me angry. What ridiculous notion have you got
into your head? What on earth do you mean?” cried Miss Bowen, speaking
quicker than her usual quick fashion, and dashing the kitten off her
knee as she rose.

“Don't be vexed with me, my poor dear girl. It may not be so--I hope
not; and even if it were, he is so handsome, so agreeable, and talks so
beautifully--I am sure you are not the first woman by many a dozen that
has been in love with him.”

“With whom?” was the sharp question, as Agatha grew quite pale.

“I must not say.--Ah, yes--I must. It may be a mere supposition. I wish
you would only tell me so, and set my mind at rest, and his too. He is
quite unhappy about it, poor man, as I see. Though, to be sure, he could
not help it, even if you did care for him.”

“Him--what 'him?'”

“Major Harper.”

Agatha's storm of passion sank to a dead calm. She sat down again
composedly, turning her flushed cheeks from the light.

“This is a new and very entertaining story. You will be kind enough,
Emma, to tell me the whole, from beginning to end.”

“It all lies in a nutshell, my dear. Oh, how glad I am that you take it
so quietly. Then, perhaps it is all a mistake, arising from your hearty
manner to every one. I told him so, and said that he need not scruple
visiting you, or be in the least afraid that----”

“That I was in love with him? He _was_ afraid, then? He informed you so?
Very kind of him! I am very much obliged to Major Harper.”

“There now--off you go again. Oh, if you would but be patient”

“Patient--when the only friend I had insults me!--when I have neither
father, nor brother,--nobody--nobody----”

She stopped, and her throat choked; but the struggle was in vain; she
burst into uncontrollable tears.

“You have me, Agatha, always me, and James!” cried Emma, hanging about
her neck, and weeping for company; until, very soon, the proud girl
shut down the floodgates of her passion, and became herself again.
Herself--as she could not have been, were there a mightier power
dwelling in her heart than pride.

“Now, Emma, since you have seen how the thing has vexed me, though
not”--and she laughed--“not as being one of the many dozens of fools in
love with Major Harper--will you tell me how this amusing circumstance
arose?”

“I really cannot, my dear. The whole thing was so hurried and confused.
We were talking together, very friendly and sociably, as the Major and
I always do, about you; and how much I wished you to be settled in life,
as he must wish likewise, being the trustee of your little fortune, and
standing in a sort of fatherly relation towards you. He did not seem to
like the word; looked very grave and very”--

“Compassionate, doubtless! Said 'he had reason to believe, that is to
fear, I did not regard him quite as a father!' That was it, Emma, I
suppose?”

“Well, my dear, I am glad to see you laughing at it I don't remember his
precise words.”

“Probably these: 'My dear Mrs. Thornycroft, I am greatly afraid
poor Agatha Bowen is dying for love of me.' Very candid--and like a
gentleman!”

“Now you are too sarcastic; for he is a gentleman, and most kind-hearted
too. If you had only seen how grieved he was at the bare idea of your
being made unhappy on his account!”

“How considerate!--and how very confidential he must have been to you!”

“Nay, he hardly said anything plainly; I assure you he did not. Only
somehow he gave me the impression that he was afraid of--what I had
feared for a long time. For as I always told you, Agatha, Major Harper
is a settled bachelor--too old to change. Besides, he has had so many
women in love with him.”

“Does he count their names, one by one, on his fingers, and hang their
locks of hair on his paletot, after the Indian fashion Nathanael Harper
told us of?--Poor Nathanael!” And on her excited mood that pale “good”
 face rose up like a vision of serenity. She ceased to mock so bitterly
at Nathanael's brother and her own once-honoured friend.

“I don't like your abusing Major Harper in this way,” said Emma,
gravely; “we all know his little weaknesses, but he is an excellent man,
and my husband likes him. And it is nothing so very wonderful if he has
been rather confidential with a steady married woman like me--just the
right person, in short. It was for your good too, my dear. I am sure I
asked him plainly if he ever could think of marrying you. But he shook
his head, and answered, 'No, that was quite impossible.'”

“Quite impossible, indeed,” said Agatha, her proud lips quivering. “And
should he favour you with any more confidences, you may tell him that
Agatha Bowen never knew what it was to be 'in love' with any man.
Likewise, that were he the only man on earth, she would not condescend
to fall in love with or marry Major Frederick Harper.--Now, Emma, let us
go down to lunch.”

They would have done so, after Mrs. Thornycroft had kissed and embraced
her friend, in sincere delight that Agatha was quite heart-whole, and
ready to make what she called “a sensible marriage,” but they were
stopped on the stairs by a letter that came by post.

“A strange hand,” Miss Bowen observed, carelessly. “Will you go
down-stairs, Emma, and I will come when I have read it.”

But Agatha did not read it. She threw it on the floor, and turning the
bolt of the door, paced her little drawing-room in extreme agitation.

“I am glad I did not love him--I thank God I did not love him,” she
muttered by fits. “But I might have done so, so good and kind as he was,
and I so young, with no one to care for. And no one cares for me--no
one--no one!”

“Young Northen” darted through her mind, but she laughed to scorn the
possibility. What love could there be in an empty-headed fool?

“Never any but fools have ever made love to me! Oh, if an honest, noble
man did but love me, and I could marry, and get out of this friendless
desolation, this contemptible, scheming, match-making set, where I and
my feelings are talked of, speculated on, bandied about from house to
house. It is horrible--horrible! But I'll not cry! No!”

She dried the tears that were scorching her eyes, and mechanically took
up her letter; until, remembering how long she had been upstairs, and
how all that time Emma's transparent disposition and love of talk might
have laid her and her whole affairs open before the Iansons, she
quickly put the epistle in her pocket unread, and went down into the
dining-room.

It was not till night, when she sat idly brushing out her long curls,
and looking at her Pawnee face in the mirror--alas! the poor face now
seemed browner and uglier than ever!--that Agatha recollected this same
letter.

“It may give me something to think about, which will be well,” sighed
she; and carelessly pushing her hair behind her ears, she drew the
candle nearer, and began leisurely to read.

[Illustration: She began leisurely to read  p036]

The commencement was slightly abrupt:


“A month ago--had any one told me I should write this letter, I
could not have believed it possible. But strange things happen in our
lives--things over which we seem to have no control; we are swept on by
an impulse and a power which most often guide us for our good. I hope it
may be so now.

“I came to England with no intention save that of seeing my family, and
no affection in my heart stronger than for them. Living the solitary
life that Uncle Brian leads, I have met with few women, and have never
loved any woman--until now.

“You may think me a 'boy;' indeed, I overheard you say so once; but I am
a man--with a heart full of all a man's emotions, passionate and strong.
Into that heart I took _you_, from the first moment I ever saw your
face. This is just three weeks ago, but it might have been three
years--I know you so well. I have watched you continually; every trait
of your character--every thought of your mind. From other people I have
found out every portion of your history--every daily action of your
life. I know you wholly and completely, faults and all, and--I love you.
No man will ever love you more than I.

“That you should have the least interest in me now, is, I am aware,
unlikely; indeed, almost impossible; therefore I shall not expect
or desire any answer to this letter, sent just before I leave for
Dorsetshire.

“On my return, a week hence, I shall come and see you, should you not
forbid it. I shall come merely as a _friend_, so that you need have no
scruple in my visiting you, once at least. If afterwards, when you know
me better, you should suffer me to ask for another title, giving to you
the dearest and closest that man can give to woman--then--oh! little you
think how I would love you, Agatha!

“Nathanael Locke Harper.”


Agatha read this letter all through with a kind of fascination. Her
first emotion was that of most utter astonishment. It had never crossed
her mind that Nathanael Harper was the sort of being very likely to fall
in love with anybody--and for him to love her! With such a love, too,
that despite its suddenness carried with it the impression of quiet
depth, strength, and endurance irresistible. It was beyond belief.

She read over again fragments of his own words. “I took you into my
heart from the first moment I ever saw you;”--“I love you--no man will
ever love you more than I.” “Little you think how I would love you,
Agatha!”

Agatha--who a minute before had been pondering mournfully that no one
cared for her--that she was of no use to any one--and that no living
soul would miss her, were her existence blotted out from the face of
earth that very night!

She began to tremble; ay, even though she felt that Nathanael had
judged correctly--that she did not now love him, and probably never
might--still, overwhelmed with the sudden sense of _his_ great love,
she trembled. A strange softness crept over her; and for the second time
that day she yielded to a weakness only drawn from her proud heart by
rare emotions--Agatha wept.




CHAPTER IV.

To say that Agatha Bowen slept but ill that night would be unnecessary;
since there is probably no girl who did not do so after receiving a
first love-letter. And this was indeed her first; for the commonplace
and business-like episode of young Northen had not been beautified by
any such compositions. A second harmless adventure of like kind had
furnished her with a little amusement and some vexation,--but never till
now had her girlish heart been approached by any wooing which she could
instinctively feel was that of real love. It touched her very much; for
a time absorbing all distinct resolutions or intentions in a maze of
pleasant, tender pity, and wonderment not unmixed with fear.

Half the night she lay awake, planning what she should do and say in the
future; writing in her head a dozen imaginary answers to Mr. Harper's
letter, until she recollected that he had expressly stated it required
none. Nevertheless, she thought she must write, if only to tell him that
she did not love him, and that there was not the slightest use in his
hoping to be anything more to her than a friend.

“A friend!” She recoiled at the word, remembering how sorely her pride
and feelings had been wounded by him she once held to be the best friend
she had. She never could hold him as such any more. Her impulsive anger
exaggerated even to wickedness the vanity of a man who fancied
every woman was in love with him. She forgot all Major Harper's good
qualities, his high sense of honour, his unselfish kindheartedness, his
generous, gay spirit She set him down at once as unworthy the name of
friend. Then--what friend had she? Not one--not one in the world.

In this strait, strangely, temptingly sweet seemed to come the words,
“_I love you; no man will ever love you better than I._”

To one whose heart is altogether free, the knowledge of being deeply
loved, and by a man whose attachment would do honour to any woman, is
a thought so soothing, so alluring, that from it spring half the
marriages--not strictly love-marriages--which take place in the world;
sometimes, though not always, ending in real happiness.

Agatha began to consider that it would seem very odd if she wrote to Mr.
Harper, in his home, among his family. Perhaps his sisters might notice
her handwriting--a useless fear, since they had never seen it; and at
all events it would be a pity to trouble his happiness in that pleasant
visit, by conveying prematurely the news of his rejection. She would
wait, and give him no answer for at least a day or two; it was such a
bitter thing to inflict pain on any human being, especially on one so
gentle and good as Nathanael Harper.

With this determination she went to sleep. She woke next morning, having
a confused sense that something had happened, that some one had grieved
and offended her; and--strange consciousness, softly dawning!--that some
one loved her--deeply, dearly, as in all the days since she was born she
had never been loved before. That even now some one might be thinking of
her--of her alone, as his first object in the world. The sensation was
new, inexplicable, but pleasant nevertheless. It made her feel--what
the desolate orphan girl rarely had felt--a sort of tenderness for, and
honouring of, herself. As she dressed, she once looked wistfully, even
pensively, in the looking-glass.

“It is certainly a queer, brown, Pawnee face! I wonder what he could see
in it to admire. He is very good, very! I wish I could have cared for
him!”

Her heart trembled; all the woman in her was touched. But Agatha was
resolved not to be sentimental, so she fastened her morning-dress rather
more tastefully than usual, and descended to breakfast.

Beside her plate lay a letter, which was pretty closely eyed by
the Ianson family, as their inmate's correspondence had always been
remarkably small.

“A black edge and seal. No bad news, I hope, my dear Miss Bowen?” said
the doctor's wife, sympathetically.

Agatha did not fear. Alas! in the whole wide world she had not a
relative to lose! And, glancing at the rather peculiar hand, she
recognised it at once. She remembered likewise, to account for the black
seal, that one of the Miss Harpers had died within the year. So, whether
from the spice of malice in her composition she wished to disappoint
the polite inquisitiveness of the Iansons, or whether from more generous
reasons of her own, Miss Bowen left her letter unopened until the
meal was done; when, carelessly taking it up, she adjourned to her own
sitting-room.

There was not the slightest necessity for any such precaution, as the
missive contained merely these lines:--

“In my letter of yesterday--which I doubt not you have received, since I
posted it myself--I omitted to say that not even my brother is aware
of it, or of its purport; as I rarely inform any one of my own private
affairs. Though, of course, I presume not to lay the same restriction on
you. God bless you!”

The “God bless you!” was added hastily in less neat writing, as if
the letter had been broken open to do it. The signature was merely
his initials, “N. L. H.,” and the date “Kingcombe Holm,” which Agatha
supposed was his father's house in Dorsetshire.

Then, even there, amidst his dear home circle, he had thought of
her! Agatha was more moved by that trifling circumstance, and by the
self-restraint and silence that accompanied it, than she would have been
by a whole quire of ordinary love-letters.

He did not write again during seven entire days, and while this pause
lasted she had time to think much and deeply. She ceased to play and
talk confidentially with Tittens, and felt herself growing into a
woman fast. Great mental changes may at times be wrought in one week,
especially when it happens to be one of those not infrequent July weeks,
which seem as if the sky were bent upon raining out at once the tears of
the whole summer.

On the Friday evening, when Miss Bowen, heartily tired of her
weather-bound imprisonment, stood at the dining-room window, looking out
on a hazy, yellow glow that began to appear in the west, sparkled on the
drenched trees of the square, and made little bright reflections on the
rain-pools of the pavement,--there appeared a gentleman from the house
round the corner, carefully picking his steps by the crossing, and
finally landing at Doctor Ianson's door. It was Major Harper.

Agatha instinctively quitted the window, but on second thoughts returned
thither, and when he chanced to look up, composedly bowed.

He was come to spend the evening as usual, and she must meet him as
usual too, otherwise he might think--supposing he had not yet seen Emma
Thornycroft, or even if he had,--might think--what made Agatha's cheek
burn like fire. But she controlled herself. The first vehemence of
her pride and anger was over now. She had discovered that the dawning
inclination on which she had bestowed a few dreamings and sighings,
trying, in foolish girlish fashion, to fan a chance tinder-spark into
the holy altar-fire of a woman's first love--had gone out in darkness,
and that her free heart lay quiet, in a sort of twilight shade, waiting
for its destiny; nor for the last few days had she even thought of
Nathanael. His silence had as yet no power to grieve or surprise her; if
it struck her at all, it was with the hope that perhaps his wooing might
die out of itself, and save her the trouble of a painful refusal.
She had begun to think--what girls of nineteen are very slow to
comprehend--that there might be other things in the world besides love
and its ideal dreams. She had read more than usual--some sensible prose,
some lofty-hearted poetry; and was, possibly, “a sadder and a wiser”
 girl than she had been that day week.

In this changed mood, after a little burst of well-controlled temper, a
scornful pang, and a slight trepidation of the heart, Miss Agatha Bowen
walked up-stairs to the drawing-room to meet Major Harper.

Her manner in so doing was most commendable, and a worthy example to
those young ladies who have to extinguish the tiny embers of a month
or two's idle fancy, created by an impressible nature, by girlhood's
frantic longing after unseen mysteries, and by the terrible misfortune
of having nothing to do. But Miss Bowen's demeanour, so highly
creditable, cannot be set forward in words, as it consisted in the very
simplest, mildest, and politest “How d'ye do?”

Major Harper met her with his accustomed pleasantly tender air, until
gradually he recollected himself, looked pensive, and subsided into
coldness. It was evident to Agatha that he could not have had any
communication from Mrs. Thornycroft. She was growing vexed again,
alternating from womanly wrath to childish pettishness--for in her heart
of hearts she had a deep and friendly regard for the noble half of her
guardian's character--when suddenly she decided that it was wisest to
leave the room and take refuge in indifference and her piano. There she
stayed for certainly an hour.

At length, Major Harper came softly into her sitting-room.

“Don't let me disturb you--but, when you have quite finished playing, I
should like to say a word to you.--Merely on business,” he added, with
a slightly confused manner, unusual to the perfect self-possession of
Major Harper.

Agatha sat down and faced him, so frigidly, that he seemed to withdraw
from the range of her eyes. “You do not often converse with me on
business.”

He drew back. “That is true. But I considered that with so young a
lady as yourself it was needless.--And I hate all business,” he added,
imperatively.

“Then I regret that my father burdened you with mine.

“No burden; it is a pleasure--if by any means I can be of use to you.
Believe me, my dear Miss Bowen, your advantage, your security, is my
chief aim. And therefore in this investment, of which I think it right
to inform you----”

“Investment?” she repeated, turning round a childish puzzled face. “Oh,
Major Harper, you know I am quite ignorant of these things. Do let us
talk of something else.”

“With all my heart,” he responded, evidently much relieved, and turned
the somewhat awkward conversation to the first available topic, which
chanced to be his brother Nathanael.

“You cannot think how much I miss him in my rooms, even though he was
such a short time with me. An excellent lad is N. L., and I hear they
are making so much of him in Dorsetshire. They tell me he will certainly
stay there the whole three months of his leave.”

“Oh, indeed!” observed Agatha, briefly. She hardly knew whether to be
pleased or sorry at this news, or by doubting it to take a feminine
pride in being so much better informed on the subject than the Harper
family.

“No wonder he is so happy,” continued the Major, with one of his
occasional looks of momentary, though real sadness. “Fifteen years is a
long time to be away. Though I fear, I myself have been almost as long
without seeing the whole family together.”

“Are they all together now?”--Agatha felt an irresistible desire to ask
questions.

“I believe so; at least my father and my three unmarried sisters. Old
bachelors and old maids are plentiful in the Harper family. We are all
stiff-necked animals; we eschew even gilded harness.”

Agatha's cheek glowed with anger at this supposed benevolent warning to
herself.

“I dare say your sisters are very happy, nevertheless; marriage is not
always a 'holy estate,'” said she carelessly. “But there was some other
Dorsetshire lady whom Mr. Harper told me of. Who is Anne Valery?”

Major Frederick Harper actually started, and the deep sensitive colour,
which not even his forty years and his long worldly experience could
quite keep down, rose in his handsome face.

“So N. L. spoke to you of her. No wonder. She is an--an excellent
person.”

“An excellent person,” repeated Agatha mischievously. “Then she is
rather elderly, I conclude?”

“Elderly--Anne Valery elderly! By Heavens, no!” (And the excited Major
used the solitary asseveration which clung to him, the last trace of
his brief military experience.) “Anne Valery old! Not a day older than
myself! We were companions as boy and girl, young man and young woman,
until--stay--ten--fifteen years ago. Fifteen years!--ah, yes--I suppose
she would be considered elderly now.”

After this burst, Major Harper sank into one of his cloudy moods. At
last he said, in a confidential and rather sentimental tone, “Miss
Valery is an excellent lady--an old friend of our family; but she and I
have not met for many years. Circumstances necessitated our parting.”

“Circumstances?”

Agatha guessed the truth--or fancied she did; and her wrathful pride
was up again. More trophies of the illustrious Frederick's unwilling
slaughters--more heart's blood dyeing the wheels of this unconscious
Juggernaut of female devotees! Yet there he sat, looking so pathetically
regretful, as if he felt himself the blameless, helpless instrument of
fate to work the sentimental woe of all womankind! Agatha was absolutely
dumb with indignation.

She was a little unjust, even were he erring. It is often a great
misfortune, but it is no blame to a good man that good women--more than
one--have loved him; if, as all noble men do, he hides the humiliation
or sorrow of their love sacredly in his own heart, and makes no boast
of it. Of this nobility of character--rare indeed, yet not unknown or
impossible--Frederick Harper just fell short. Kind, clever, and amusing,
he might be, but he was a man not sufficiently great to be humble.

No more was said on the mysterious topic of Miss Anne Valery. Agatha was
too angry; and the subject seemed painful to Major Harper. Though he did
what was not his habit--especially with female friends--he endeavoured,
instead of encouraging, to throw off his momentary sentimentality, and
become his usual witty, cheerful, agreeable self.

Miss Bowen, even in her tenderest inclinings towards her guardian, had
at times thought him a little too talkative--a little too much of the
brilliant man of the world. Now, in her bitterness against him, his
gaiety was positively offensive to her. She rose, and proposed that they
should quit her own private room for the general drawing-room of the
family.

The Iansons were all there, even the Doctor being prone to linger in his
dull home for the pleasure of Major Harper's delightful company. There
was another, too, the unexpected sight of whom made both Agatha and her
companion start.

As she and the Major entered, there arose, almost like an apparition
from his seat in the window-recess, the tall, slight figure of
Nathanael.

“N. L.! Where on earth have you dropped from? What a _very_
extraordinary fellow you are!” cried the elder brother.

“Perhaps unwelcome also,” said the quiet voice.

“Unwelcome--never, my dear boy! Only next time, do be a little more
confidential. Here have I been telling a whole string of apparent fibs
about your movements--have I not Miss Bowen? Do you not consider this
brother of mine the most eccentric creature in the world?”

Agatha looked up, and met the young man's eyes. Their expression could
not be mistaken; they were _lover's eyes_--such as never in her life she
had met before. They seemed constraining her to do what out of pity or
mechanical impulse she at once did--silently to hold out her hand.

Nathanael took it with his usual manner. There was no other greeting
on his part or hers. Immediately afterwards he slipped away to the very
farthest corner of the room.

It would be hard to say whether Agatha felt relieved or disappointed at
his behaviour; but surprised she most certainly was. This was not the
sort of “lover's meeting” of girlish imaginings; nor was he the sort of
lover, so perfectly unobtrusive, self-restrained, and coldly calm.
She was glad she had not been at the pains to write the romantically
pitiful, tender refusal, which she had concocted sentence by sentence
in her deeply-touched heart, during that first wakeful night. He did not
seem half miserable enough to need such wondrous compassion.

Freed in a measure from constraint, she became her own natural self, as
women rarely, indeed never, are in the presence of those they love,
or of those by whom they believe themselves loved. Neither unpleasant
consciousness rested heavily on Agatha now; her demeanour was therefore
very sweet, candid, and altogether pleasing.

Major Harper even forgot his benevolent precautions on Miss Bowen's
account, and tried to render himself as agreeable as heretofore, talking
away at a tremendous rate, and with most admirable eloquence, while his
brother sat silent in a corner. The contrast between them was never
so strong. But once or twice Agatha, wearied out with laughing and
listening, stole a look towards the figure that she felt was sitting
there; and encountered the only sign Nathanael gave,--the unmistakeable
“lover's eyes.” They seemed to pierce into her heart and make it
quiver--not exactly with tenderness, but with the strange controlling
sense by which the love of a strong nature, reticent, and self-possessed
even in its utmost passion--at times appears to enfold a woman--and
any true affection, whether of lover or friend, to those who have never
known it, and are unconsciously pining for lack of it, comes at first
like water in a thirsty land.

Miss Bowen's frank gaiety died slowly away, and she fell into more
than one long reverie, which did not escape the benign notice of her
guardian. He grew serious, and made an attempt to remove from her his
own dangerous proximity.

“Come, N. L., it is time we vanished. You have never told me the least
fragment of news from home--that is, from Kingcombe.”

“You were too much engaged, brother. But we have plenty of time.”

“Kingcombe; is that the place your father lives at?” said Mrs. Ianson,
who took a patronising interest in the young man. “What a pretty name!
Were you aware of it, Miss Bowen?”

Agatha, for her life, could not help changing colour as she answered
“Yes,” knowing perfectly well who was watching her the while, and that
he and she were thinking of the same thing, namely, the brief note whose
date was her only information as to the family residence of the Harpers.

“Kingcombe is as pretty as its name,” observed the elder brother,--“a
name more peculiar than at first seems. It was given by a loyal Harper
during the Protectorate. It had been St. Mary's Abbey, but he, with
pretended sanctimoniousness, changed the name, and called it _Kingcombe
Holm_; as a gentle hint from the Dorsetshire coast to Prince Charles
over the water. Ah! a clever fellow was my great-great-grandfather,
Geoffrey Harper!”

All laughed at the anecdote, and the Iansons looked with additional
respect on the man who thus carelessly counted his grandfathers up to
the Commonwealth. But Mrs. Ianson's curiosity penetrated even to the
Harpers of Queen Victoria's day.

“Indeed we can't let you two gentlemen away so early. If you have family
matters to talk over, suppose we send you for half-an-hour to Miss
Bowen's drawing-room! or, if they are not secrets, pray discuss them
here. I am sure we are all greatly interested; are we not, Miss Bowen?”

Agatha made some unintelligible answer. She thought Nathanael's quick
eyes darted from her to Mrs. Ianson and back again, as if to judge
whether, young-lady-like, she had told his secret to all her female
friends. But there was something in Agatha's countenance which marked
her out as that rare character, a woman who can hold her tongue--even in
a love affair.

After a minute she looked at Mr. Harper gravely, kindly, as if to say,
“You need not fear--I have not betrayed you;” and meeting her candid
eyes, his suspicions vanished. He drew nearer to the circle, and began
to talk.

“Mrs. Ianson is very kind, but we need not hold any such solemn
conclave, Frederick,” said he, smiling. “All the news that I did not
unfold in my letter of yesterday, I can tell you now. I would like every
one here to be interested in our good sisters and in all at home.”

“Yes--oh, yes,” responded the other, mechanically. “Any messages for
me?”

“My father says he hopes to see you this autumn at Kingcombe. He is
growing an old man now.”

“Ah, indeed!--An admirable man is my father, Miss Bowen. Quite a
gentleman of the old school; but peculiar--rather peculiar. Well, what
else, Nathanael?”

“Elizabeth, since Emily's death, seems to have longed after you very
much.--You were the next eldest, you know, and she fancies you were
always very like Emily. She says it is so long since you have been to
Kingcombe.”

“It is such a dull place. Besides I have seen them all elsewhere
occasionally.”

“All but Elizabeth; and, you know, unless you go to Kingcombe, you never
can see Elizabeth,” said the younger brother, gently.

“That is true!--Poor dear soul!” Frederick answered, looking grave.
“Well, I will go ere long.”

“Perhaps at Eulalie's wedding, which I told you of?”

“True--true. Eulalie is the youngest Miss Harper, as we should explain
to our kind friends here--whom I hope we are not boring very much with
our family reminiscences. And Eulalie, contrary to the usual custom of
the Harpers, is actually going to be married. To a clergyman, is he not,
N. L.?--late Curate of Kingcombe parish?”

“No--of Anne Valery's parish. By the way, you have not yet asked a
single question about Anne Valery.”

The Major's aspect visibly changed. In all the years of his acquaintance
with the world he had not yet learnt the convenient art of being a
physiognomical hypocrite. “Well, never mind--I ask a dozen questions
now. How could I forget so excellent a friend of the family?”

“She is indeed,” said Nathanael, earnestly, while a glow of pleasure or
enthusiasm dyed his pale features, and he even ceased his close watch
over Agatha. “Though I was such a boy when I left, I find I have kept a
true memory of Anne Valery. She is just the woman I always pictured
her, from my own remembrance, and from Uncle Brian's chance allusions;
though, in general, it was little enough he said of England or home. I
was quite surprised to hear from Elizabeth what a strong friendship used
to exist between Uncle Brian, yourself, and Anne Valery.”

Major Harper's restlessness increased. “Really, we are indulging our
friends with our whole genealogy--uncles, aunts, and collateral branches
included--which cannot be very interesting to Mrs. and Miss Ianson,
or even to Miss Bowen, however kindly she may be disposed towards the
Harper family.”

The Iansons here made polite disclaimers, but Agatha said nothing.
Immediately afterwards, Nathanael's conversation likewise ebbed away
into silence.

The next time Agatha heard him speak was in answer to a sudden
question of his brother's as to what had made him return to London so
unexpectedly. “I thought you would have stayed at least three months.”

“No,” he said in a low tone; “by that time I shall be far enough away.”

“Why so?”

“From circumstances which have lately arisen”--he did not look at
Agatha, but she felt his meaning--“I fear I must return to America at
once.”

He said no more, for his brother asked no more questions. But the
tidings jarred painfully on Agatha's mind.

He was then going away, this man of so gentle, true and noble
nature--this, the only man who loved her, and whom, while she thought of
rejecting, she had still hoped to retain as an honoured and dear friend.
He was going away, and she might never see him more. She felt grieved,
and her lonely, unloved position rose up before her in more bitterness
and more fear than it was wont to do. She became as thoughtful and
silent as Nathanael himself.

Mr. Harper never attempted to address her or attract her attention
during all that strange, long evening, which comprised in itself so many
slight circumstances, so many conflicting states of feeling. Almost the
only word this very eccentric lover said to her was in a whisper, just
as his hand touched hers in bidding good-bye.

“As I am leaving England so soon, may I come here again to-morrow?”

“No, not to-morrow;” and then, her kind heart repenting of the evident
pain she gave, she added, “Well, the day after to-morrow, if you like.
But----”

Whatever that forbidding “but” was meant to hint, Nathanael did not stay
to hear. He was gone in a moment.

However, that night a chance word of Mrs. Ianson's did more for the suit
of the unloved, or only half-loved lover, than he himself ever dreamed
of.

“Well,” said that lady, with sly, matronly smile, as, showing more
attention than usual, she lighted Agatha's candle for bed--“Well, my
dear Miss Bowen, is the wedding to be at my house?”

“What wedding?”

“Oh, you know; you know! I have guessed it a long while, but
to-night--surely, I may congratulate you? Never was there a more
charming man than Major Harper.”

Agatha looked furious. “Has he then”--“told you the lie he told to
Emma”--she was about to say, but luckily checked herself. “Has he then
been so premature as to give you this information?”

“No! oh, of course not. But the thing is as plain as light.”

“You are mistaken, Mrs. Ianson. He is one of my very kindest friends;
but I have never had the slightest intention of marrying Major Harper.”

With that she took her candle, and walked slowly to her own room. There,
with her door locked, though that was needless, since there was
no welcome or unwelcome friendship likely to intrude on her utter
solitude,--she gave way to a woman's wounded pride. Added to this, was
the terror that seizes a helpless young creature, who, all supports
taken away, is at last set face to face with the cruel world, without
even the steadfastness given by a strong sorrow. If she had really loved
Frederick Harper, perhaps her condition would have been more endurable
than now.

At length, above the storm of passion there seemed floating an audible
voice, just as if the mind of him who she knew was always thinking of
her, then spoke to her mind, with the wondrous communication that has
often happened in dreams, or waking, between two who deeply loved. A
communication which appears both possible and credible to those who have
felt any strong human attachment, especially that one which for the sake
of its object seems able to cross the bounds of distance, time, life, or
eternity.

It was a thing that neither then or afterwards could she ever account
for, and years elapsed before she mentioned the circumstance to any
one. But while she lay weeping across her bed, Agatha seemed to hear
distinctly, just as if it had been a voice gliding past the window,
half-mixing with the wind that was then rising, the words:

“_I love you! No man will ever love you like me._”

That night, before she slept, her determination was taken.




CHAPTER V.

Next morning Miss Bowen astonished every one, and excited once more Mrs.
Ianson's incredulous smile, by openly desiring the servant who waited to
take a message for her to Major Harper's. It was to the effect that she
wished immediately to see that gentleman, could he make it convenient to
visit her.

The message was given by her very distinctly, and with most creditable
calmness, considering that the destinies of her whole life hung on the
sentence.

Major Harper appeared, and was shown into Miss Bowen's drawing-room. She
was not there, and the Major waited rather uneasily for several minutes,
unaware that half of that time she had been standing without, her hand
on the lock of the door. But her tremulousness was that of natural
emotion, not of fluctuating purpose. No physiognomist studying Agatha's
mouth and chin would doubt the fact, that though rather slow to
will--when she had once willed, scarcely anything had power to shake her
resolution.

She went in at last, and bade Major Harper good morning. “I have sent
for you,” she said, “to talk over a little business.”

“Business!”--And the hesitation and discomfort which seemed to arise in
him at the mere mention of the word again were visible in Major Harper.

“Not trust business--something quite different,” said Agatha, scarcely
able to help smiling at the alarm of her guardian.

“Then anything you like, my dear Miss Bowen! I have nothing in the world
to do to-day. That stupid brother of mine is worse company than none
at all. He said he had letters to write to Kingcombe, and vanished
up-stairs! The rude fellow! But he is an excellent fellow too.”

“So you have always said. He appears to love his home, and be much
beloved there. Is it so?”

“Most certainly. Already they know him better than they do me, and care
for him more; though he has been away for fifteen years. But then he has
kept up a constant correspondence with them; while I, tossing about in
the world--ah! I have had a hard life, Miss Bowen!”

He looked so sad, that Agatha felt sorry for him. But his melancholy
moods had less power to touch her than of old. His gaiety so quickly
and invariably returned, that her belief in the reality of his grief was
somewhat shaken.

She paused a little, and then recurred again, indifferently as it were,
to Nathanael--the one person in his family of whom Major Harper always
spoke gladly and warmly.

“You seem to have a great love for your younger brother. Is he then so
noble a character?”

“What do you call a noble character, my dear young lady?”

The half-jesting, half-patronising manner irritated Agatha; but she
answered boldly:

“A man honest in his principles, faithful to his word; just, generous,
and honourable.”

“What a category of qualities! How interested young ladies are in a
pale, thin boy! Well then”--seeing that Agatha looked serious--“well
then, I declare to Heaven that, even according to your high-flown
definitions, he is as noble a lad as ever breathed. I can find no
fault in him, except that, as I said, he is such a mere boy. Are
you satisfied? Did you want to try if I were indeed a heartless,
unbrotherly, good-for-nothing fellow, as you appear to think me
sometimes?”

“No,” said Agatha briefly, noticing with something like scorn the
Major's instinctive assumption that her questions must have some near
or remote reference to himself, while he never once guessed their real
motive. That answered, she changed the conversation.

After half-an-hour's chat, Major Harper delicately alluded to the
supposed business on which she had wished to see him, though in a tone
that showed him to be rather doubtful whether it existed at all.

Agatha coloured, and her heart quailed a little, as any girl's would,
in having to speak so openly of things which usually reach young maidens
softly murmured amidst the confessions of first love, or revealed
by tender parents with blessings and tears. Life's earliest and best
romance came to her with all its bloom worn away--all its sacredness and
mystery set aside. For a moment she felt this hard.

“I wished to inform you of something nearly concerning me, which, as
the guardian appointed by my father, it is right you should know. I
have had”--here she tried to make her lips say the words without
faltering--“I have had an offer of marriage.”

“God bless my soul!” stammered out Major Harper, completely thrown off
his guard by surprise. A very awkward pause ensued, until, his natural
good feeling conquering any other, he said, not without emotion, “The
fact of your consulting me shows that this offer is--is not without
interest to you. May I ask--is it likely--that I shall have to
congratulate you?”

“Yes.”

He rose up slowly, and walked to the window. Whether his sensations were
merely those of wounded vanity, or whether he had liked her better than
he himself acknowledged, certain it was that Major Frederick Harper was
a good deal moved--so much so, that he succeeded in concealing it. He
came back, very kind, subdued, and tender, sat down by her side and took
her hand.

“You will not wonder that I am somewhat surprised--nay, affected--by
these sudden tidings, viewing you as I have always done in the light of
a--younger sister--or--or a daughter. Your happiness must naturally be
very dear to me.”

“Thank you,” murmured Agatha; and the tears came into her eyes. She felt
that she had been somewhat harsh to him; but she felt, too, with great
thankfulness, that, despite this softening compunction, her heart was
free and firm. She had great liking, but not a particle of love, for
Major Harper.

“I trust the--the gentleman you allude to is of a character likely to
make you happy?”

“Yes,” returned Agatha, for she could only speak in monosyllables.

“Is he--as your friend and guardian I may ask that question--is he
of good standing in the world, and in a position to maintain you
comfortably?”

“I do not know--I have never thought about that,” she cried, restlessly.
“All I know is that he--loves me--that I honour him--that he would take
me”--“out of this misery,” she was about to say, but stopped, feeling
that both the thought and the expression were unworthy Nathanael's
future wife, and unfit to be heard by Nathanael's brother.

“That he would take me,” repeated she firmly, “into a contented and
happy home, where I should be made a better woman than I am, and live a
life more worthy of myself and of him.”

“You must then esteem him very highly?”

“I do--more than any man I ever knew.”

The Major winced slightly, but quickly recovered himself. “That is, I
believe, the feeling with which every woman ought to marry. He who
wins and deserves such an attachment is”--and he sighed--“is a happy
man!--Happier, perhaps, than those who have remained single.”

Again there ensued a pause, until Major Harper broke it by saying:

“There is one more question--the last of all--which, after the
confidence you have shown me, I may venture to ask: do I know this
gentleman?”

Agatha replied by putting into his hands his brother's letter.

The moment she had done so she felt remorse for having betrayed her
lover's confidence by letting any eyes save her own rest on his tender
words. Had she loved him as he loved her, she could not possibly have
done so; and even now a painful sensation smote her. She would have
snatched the letter back, but it was too late.

Major Harper's eyes had merely skimmed down the page to the signature,
when he threw it from him, crying out vehemently:

“Impossible! Agatha marry Nathanael--Nathanael marry Agatha!--He is
a boy, a very child! What can he be thinking of? Send his letter
back--tell him it is utter nonsense! Upon my soul it is!”

Major Harper was very shortsighted and inconsiderate when he gave way to
this burst of vexation before any woman--still more before such a woman
as Agatha.

She let him go on without interruption, but she lifted the letter from
the floor, refolded it, and held it tenderly--more tenderly than she
had ever until now felt towards it or its writer. Something of the grave
sweetness belonging to the tie of an affianced wife began to cast its
shadow over her heart.

“Major Harper, when you have quite done speaking, perhaps you will sit
down and hear what I have to say.”

Struck by her manner, he obeyed, entreating her pardon likewise, for he
was a gentleman, and felt that he had acted very wrongly.

“Yet surely,” he began--until, looking at her, something convinced him
that his arguments were useless. He stretched out his hand again for the
letter, but with a slight gesture which expressed much, Agatha withheld
it. After a pause, he said, meekly enough, as if thoroughly overcome by
circumstances,--“So, it is quite true? You really love my brother?”

“I honour him, as I said, more than I do any man.”

“And love him--are you sure you love him?”

“No one,” she answered, deeply blushing--“No one but himself has a right
to receive the answer to that question.”

“True, true. Pardon me once more. But I am so startled, absolutely
amazed. My brother Nathanael--he that was a baby when I was a grown
man--he to marry--marrying you too--and I----Well; I suppose I am really
growing into a miserable, useless old bachelor. I have thrown away
my life: I shall be the last apple left on the tree--and a tolerably
withered one too. But no matter. The world shall see the sunny half of
me to the last.”

He laughed rather tunelessly at his own bitter jest, and after a brief
silence, recovered his accustomed manner.

“So so; such things must be, and I, though a bachelor myself, have no
right to forbid marriages. Allow me to congratulate you. Of course you
have answered this letter? My brother knows his happiness?”

“He knows nothing; but I wished that he should do so to-day, after I
had spoken to you. It was a respect I felt to be your due, to form no
engagement of this kind without your knowledge.”

“Thank you,” he said in a low voice.

“You have been good and kind to me,” continued Agatha, a little touched,
“and I wished to have your approval in all things--chiefly in this. Is
it so?”

He offered his hand, saying, “God bless you!” with a quivering lip. He
even muttered “child;” as though he felt how old he was growing, and
how he had let all life's happiness slip by, until it was just that he
should no longer claim it, but be content to see young people rejoicing
in their youth. After a pause, he added, “Now, shall I go and fetch my
brother?”

“No,” replied Agatha, “send for him, and do you stay here.”

“As you please,” said Major Harper, a good deal surprised at this very
original way of conducting a love affair. After courteously offering to
withdraw himself to the dining-room, which Agatha declined, he sat and
waited with her during the few minutes that elapsed before his brother
appeared.

Nathanael looked much agitated; his boyish face seemed to have grown
years older since the preceding night. He paused at the door, and
glanced with suspicion on his brother and Miss Bowen.

“You sent for me, Frederick?”

“It was I who sent for you,” said Agatha. And then steadfastly regarding
him whom she had tacitly accepted as her husband, the guide and ruler
of her whole life--her self-possession failed. A great timidity,
almost amounting to terror, came over her. Vaguely she felt the want of
something unknown--something which in the whirl of her destiny she could
grasp and hold by, sure that she held fast to the right. It was the one
emotion, neither regard, liking, honour, or esteem, yet including and
surpassing all--the _love_, strong, pure love, without which it is so
dangerous, often so fatal, for a woman to marry.

Agatha, never having known this feeling, could scarcely be said to have
sacrificed it; at least not consciously. But even while she believed she
was doing right in accepting the man who loved her, and whom she could
make so happy, she trembled.

Major Harper sat looking out of the window in an uncomfortable silence,
which he evidently knew not how to break. It was a very awkward and
somewhat ridiculous position for all three.

Nathanael was the first to rise out of it. Slowly his features settled
into composure, and his strong, earnest purpose gave him both dignity
and calmness, even though all hope had evidently died. He looked
steadily at his brother, avoiding Agatha.

“Frederick, I think I understand now. She has been telling you all.”

“It was right she should. Her father left her in my care. She wishes you
to learn her decision in my presence,” said Major Harper, unwittingly
taking a new and even respectful tone to the younger brother, whom he
was wont to call “that boy.”

Nathanael grasped with his slight, long fingers, the chair by which he
stood. “As she pleases. I am quite ready. Still--if--yesterday--without
telling you or any one--she had said to me--But I am quite ready to hear
what she decides.”

Despite his firmness, the words were uttered slowly and with a great
struggle.

“Tell him everything, Miss Bowen; it will come better from yourself,”
 said Frederick Harper, rising.

Agatha rose likewise, walked across the room, and laid her hand in that
of him who loved her. The only words she said were so low that he alone
could hear them:

“I have been very desolate--be kind to me!”

Nathanael made no answer; indeed for the moment his look was that of a
man bewildered--but he never forgot those words.

Agatha felt her hand clasped--softly--but with a firm grasp that seemed
to bind it to his for ever. This was the only sign of betrothal that
passed between them. In another minute or two, unable to bear the scene
longer, she crept out of the room and walked up-stairs, feeling with
a dizzy sense, half of comfort, half of fear--yet, on the whole, the
comfort stronger than the fear--that the struggle was all over, and her
fate sealed for life.

When she descended, an hour after, the Harpers had gone; but she found a
little note awaiting her, just one line:

“If not forbidden, I may come this evening.”

Agatha knew she had no right to forbid, even had she wished it, now. So
she waited quietly through the long, dim, misty day--which seemed the
strangest day she had ever known; until, in the evening, her lover's
knock came to the door.

She was sitting with Jane Ianson, near whom, partly in shy fear, partly
from a vague desire for womanly sympathy, she had closely kept for the
last hour. As yet, the Iansons knew nothing. She wondered whether from
his manner or hers they would be likely to guess what had passed that
morning between herself and Mr. Harper.

It was an infinite relief to her when following, nay preceding,
Nathanael, there appeared his elder brother, with the old pleasant smile
and bow.

But amidst all his assumed manner, Major Harper took occasion to whisper
kindly to Agatha; “My brother made me come--I shall do admirably to talk
nonsense to the Iansons.”

And so he did, carrying off the restraint of the evening so ingeniously
that no one would have suspected any deeper elements of joy or pain
beneath the smooth surface of their cheerful group.

Nathanael sat almost as silent as ever; but even his very silence was
a beautiful, joyful repose. In his aspect a new soul seemed to have
dawned--the new soul, noble and strong, which comes into a man when he
feels that his life has another life added to it, to guard, cherish, and
keep as his own until death. And though Mr. Harper gave little outward
sign of what was in him, it was touching to see how his eyes followed
his betrothed everywhere, whether she were moving about the room, or
working, or trying to sing. Continually Agatha felt the shining of
these quiet, tender eyes, and she began to experience the
consciousness--perhaps the sweetest in the world--of being able to make
another human being entirely happy.

Only sometimes, when she looked at her future husband--hardly able
to believe he was really such--and thought how strangely things had
happened; how here she was, no longer a girl, but a woman engaged to
be married, sitting calmly by her lover's side, without any of the
tremblingly delicious emotions which she had once believed would
constitute the great mystery, Love--a strange pensiveness overtook her.
She felt all the solemnity of her position, and, as yet, little of its
sweetness. Perhaps that would come in time. She resolved to do her
duty towards him whom she so tenderly honoured, and who so deeply loved
herself; and all the evening the entire gentleness of her behaviour
was enough to charm the very soul of any one who held towards her the
relation now borne by Nathanael Harper.

At length even the good-natured elder brother's flow of conversation
seemed to fail, and he gave hints about leaving, to which the younger
tacitly consented. Agatha bade them both good-night in public, and crept
away, as she thought, unobserved, to her own sitting-room.

There she stood before the hearth, which looked cheerful enough this
wet July night,--the fire-light shining on her hands, as they hung down
listlessly folded together. She was thinking how strange everything
seemed about her, and what a change had come in a few days, nay, hours.

Suddenly a light touch was laid on her hand. It startled her, but she
did not attempt to shake it off. She knew quite well whose hand it was,
and that it had a right to be there.

“Agatha!”

She half turned, and said once more “Good-night.”

“Good-night, _my_ Agatha.”

And for a minute he stood, holding her hand by the fire-light, until
some one below called out loudly for “Mr. Harper.” Then a kiss, soft and
timid as a woman's, trembled over Agatha's mouth, and he was gone.

This was the first time she had ever been kissed by any man. The feeling
it left was very new, tremulous, and strange.




CHAPTER VI.

The next morning was Sunday. Under one of the dark arches in Bloomsbury
Church--with Mrs. Ianson's large feathers tossing on one side, and
Jane's sickly unhappy face at the other--Agatha said her prayers in due
sabbatical form. “Said her prayers” is the right phrase, for trouble
had not yet opened her young heart to pray. Yet she was a good girl, not
wilfully undevout; and if during the long missionary-sermon she secretly
got her prayer-book and read--what was the most likely portion to
attract her--the marriage service, it was with feelings solemnised
and not unsacred. Some portions of it made her very thoughtful, so
thoughtful that when suddenly startled by the conclusion of the sermon,
she prayed--not with the clergyman, for “Jews, Turks, Infidels, and
Heretics”--but for two young creatures, herself and another, who perhaps
needed Heaven's merciful blessings quite as much.

When she rose up it was with moist eyelashes; and then she perceived
what until this minute she had not seen,--that close behind her, sitting
where he had probably sat all church-time, was Nathanael Harper.

If anything can touch the heart of a generous woman, when it is still
a free heart, it is that quiet, unobtrusive, proudly-silent love which,
giving all, exacts nothing. Agatha's smile had in it something even of
shy tenderness when at the church-door she was met by Mr. Harper.
And when, after speaking courteously to the Iansons, he came, quite
naturally as it were, to her side, and drew her arm in his, she felt
a strange sense of calm and rest in knowing that it was her betrothed
husband upon whom she leant.

At the door he seemed wishful enough to enter; but Mrs. Ianson
invariably looked very coldly upon Sunday visitors.

And something questioning and questionable in the glances of both that
lady and her daughter was very painful to Miss Bowen.

“Not to-day,” she whispered, as her lover detained her hand. “To-morrow
I shall have made all clear to the Iansons.”

“As you will! Nothing shall trouble you,” said he, with a gentle
acquiescence, the value of which, alas! she did not half appreciate.
“Only, remember, I have so few to-morrows.”

This speech troubled Agatha for many minutes, bringing various thoughts
concerning the dim future which as yet she had scarcely contemplated.
It is wonderful how little an unsophisticated girl's mind rests on the
common-sense and commonplace of marriage,--household prospects, income,
long or short engagements, and the like. When in the course of that
drowsy, dark Sunday afternoon, with the rain-drops dripping heavily on
the balcony, she took opportunity formally to communicate her secret to
the astonished Mrs. Ianson, Agatha was perfectly confounded by the two
simple questions: “When are you to be married? And where are you going
to live?”

“And oh! my dear,” cried the doctor's wife, roused into positive
sympathy by a confidence which always touches the softest chord in every
woman's heart--“oh, my dear, I hope it will not be a long engagement.
People change so--at least men do. You don't know what misery comes out
of long engagements!” And, lowering her voice, she turned her dull grey
eyes, swimming with motherly tears, towards the corner sofa where the
pale, fretful, old-maidish Jane lay sleeping.

Agatha understood a little, and guessed more. After that day, however
ill-tempered and disagreeable the invalid might be, she was always very
patient and kind towards Jane Ianson.

After tea, when her daughter was gone to bed, Mrs. Ianson unfolded
all to the Doctor, who nearly broke Miss Bowen's fingers with his
congratulatory shake; John the footman, catching fragments of talk,
probably put the whole story together for the amusement of the lower
regions; and when Agatha retired to rest she was quite sure that the
whole house, down to the little maid who waited on herself, was fully
aware of the important fact that Miss Bowen was going to be married to
Mr. Locke Harper.

This annoyed her--she had not expected it. But she bore it stoically as
a necessary evil. Only sometimes she thought how different all things
were, seen afar and near; and faintly sighed for that long ago lost
picture of wakening fancy--the Arcadian, impossible love-dream.

She sat up till after midnight, writing to Emma Thornycroft, the
only near friend to whom she had to write, the news of her
engagement--information that for many reasons she preferred giving
by pen, not words. Finishing, she put her blind aside to have one
freshening look at the trees in the square. It was quite cloudless now,
the moon being just rising--the same moon that Agatha had seen, as a
bright slender line appearing at street corners, on the Midsummer night
when she and Nathariael Harper walked home together. She felt a deep
interest in that especial moon, which seemed between its dawning and
waning to have comprised the whole fate of her life.

Quietly opening the window, she leant out gazing at the moonlight, as
foolish girls will--yet who does not remember, half pathetically, those
dear old follies!

“Heigho! I wonder what will be the end of it all!” said Agatha Bowen;
without specifying what the pronoun “it” alluded to.

But she stopped, hearing a footstep rather policeman-like passing up and
down the railing under the trees. And as after a while he crossed the
street--she saw that the “policeman” had the very unprofessional
appearance of a cloak and long fair hair:--Agatha's cheek burned; she
shut down the window and blind, and relighted the candle. But her heart
beat fast--it was so strange, so new, to be the object of such love.
“However, I suppose I shall get used to it--besides--oh, how good he
is!”

And the genuine reverence of her heart conquered its touch of feminine
vanity; which, perhaps, had he known, Nathanael would have done wiser
in going to bed like a Christian, than in wandering like a heathen
idolater round his beloved's shrine. But, however her pride may have
been flattered, it is certain that Agatha went to sleep with tears,
innocent and tender enough to serve as mirrors for watching
night-angels, lying on her cheek.

The next morning she waited at home, and for the first time received
her betrothed openly as such. She was sitting alone in her little
drawing-room engaged at her work; but put it down when Mr. Harper
entered, and held out her hand kindly, though with a slight restraint
and confusion. Both were needless: he only touched this lately-won
hand with his soft boyish lips--like a _preux chevalier_ of the olden
time--and sat down by her side. However deep his love might be, its
reserve was unquestionable.

After a while he began to talk to her--timidly yet tenderly, as friend
with friend--watching her fingers while they moved, until at length the
girl grew calmed by the calmness of her young lover. So much so, that
she even forgot he was a young man and her lover, and found herself
often steadfastly looking up into his face, which was gradually melting
into a known likeness, as many faces do when we grow familiar with them.
Agatha puzzled herself much as to who it could be that Mr. Harper was
like--though she found no nearer resemblance than a head she had once
seen of the angel Gabriel.

She told him this--quite innocently, and then, recollecting herself,
coloured deeply. But Nathanael looked perfectly happy.

“The likeness is very flattering,” said he, smiling. “Yet I would only
wish to be--what you called me once, the first evening I saw you. Do you
remember?”

“No.”

“Ah--well--it was not probable you should,” he answered, as if
patiently taking upon himself the knowledge which only a strong love can
bear--that it is _alone_ in its strength. “It was merely when they were
talking of my name, and you said I looked like a Nathanael. Now, do you
remember?”

“Yes, and I think so still,” she replied, without any false shame. “I
never look at you, but I feel there is 'no guile' in you, Mr. Harper.”

“Thanks,” he said, with much feeling. “Thanks--except for the last word.
How soon will you try to say 'Nathanael?'”

A fit of wilfulness or shyness was upon Agatha. She drew away her hand
which he had taken. “How soon? Nay, I cannot tell. It is a long name,
old-fashioned, and rather ugly.”

He made no answer--scarcely even showed that he was hurt; but he never
again asked her to call him “Nathanael.”

She went on with her work, and he sat quietly looking at her for some
little time more. Any Asmodeus peering at them through the roof would
have vowed these were the oddest pair of lovers ever seen.

At last, rousing himself, Mr. Harper said: “It is time, Agatha”--he
paused, and added--“dear Agatha--quite time that we should talk a
little about what concerns our happiness--at least mine.”

She looked at him--saw how earnest he was, and put down her work. The
softness of her manner soothed him.

“I know, dear Agatha, that it is very wrong in me; but sometimes I can
hardly believe this is all true, and that you really promised--what I
heard from your own lips two days ago. Will you--out of that good heart
of yours--say it again?”

“What must I say?”

“That you love--no, I don't mean that--but that you care for me a
little--enough to trust me with your happiness? Do you?”

For all reply, Agatha held out the hand she had drawn back. Her lover
kept it tight in that peculiar grasp of his--very soft and still, but
firm as adamant.

“Thank you. You shall never regret your trust. My brother told me all
you said to him on Saturday morning. I know you do not quite love me
yet.”

Agatha started, it was so true.

“Still, as you have loved no one else--you are sure of that?”

She thought a minute, then lifted her candid eyes, and answered:

“Yes, quite sure!”

He, watching her closely, betrayed himself so far as to give an inward
thankful sigh.

“Then, Agatha, since I love you, I am not afraid.”

“Nor I,” she answered, and a tear fell, for she was greatly moved. Her
betrothed put his arm round her, softly and timidly, as if unfamiliar
with actions of tenderness; but she trembled so much that, still softly,
he let her go, only keeping firm hold of her hand, apparently to show
that no power on earth, gentle or strong, should wrest that from him.

A few minutes after, he began speaking of his affairs, of which Agatha
was in a state of entire ignorance. She said, jestingly--for they had
fallen into quite familiar jesting now, and were laughing together like
a couple of children--that she had not the least idea whether she were
about to marry a prince or a beggar.

“No,” answered her lover, smiling at her unworldliness, and thereby
betraying that, innocent as he looked, his was not the innocence of
ignorance. “No; but I am not exactly a prince, and as a beggar I should
certainly be too proud to marry _you_.”

“Indeed! Why?”

“Because I understand you are a very rich young lady (I don't know
how rich, for I never thought of the subject or inquired about it till
to-day), while I am only able to earn my income year by year. Yet it is
a good income, and, I earnestly hope, fully equal to yours.”

“I don't know what mine is. But why are you so punctilious?”

“Uncle Brian, impressed upon me, from my boyhood, that one of the
greatest horrors of life must be the taunt of having married an heiress
for her money.”

“Has he ever married?”

“No.”

“And is he a very old man?” Miss Bowen asked, less interested in money
matters than in this Uncle Brian, whose name so constantly floated
across his nephew's conversation.

“Fifteen years in the colonies makes a man old before his time. And he
was not very young, probably full thirty, when he went out But I could
go on talking of Uncle Brian for ever; you must stop me, Agatha.”

“Not I--I like to hear,” she answered, beginning to feel how sweet it
was to sit talking thus confidentially, and know herself and her words
esteemed fair and pleasant in the eyes of one who loved her. But as she
looked up and smiled, that same witching smile put an effectual stop to
the chronicle of Brian Harper.

“And I have to go back to Canada so soon!” whispered Nathanael to
himself, as his gaze, far less calm than heretofore, fell down like a
warm sunshine over his betrothed, “The time of my stay here will soon be
over, and what then--Agatha?”

She did not wholly comprehend the question, and so let it pass. She was
quite content to keep him talking about things and people in whom her
interest was naturally growing; of Kingcombe Holm, the old house on the
Dorset coast, where the Harpers had dwelt for centuries; of its present
owner, Nathanael Harper, Esquire, of that venerable name so renowned in
Dorsetshire pedigrees, that one Harper had refused to merge it even in
the blaze of a peerage. Of the five Miss Harpers, of whom one was dead,
and another, the all-important “married sister,” Mrs. Dugdale, lived in
a town close by. Of Eulalie, the pretty _cadette_ who was at some
future time going to disappear behind the shadows of matrimony; of
busy, housekeeping Mary, whom nobody could possibly do without, and who
couldn't be suffered to marry on any account whatever. Last of all, was
the eye, ear, and heart of the house, kept tenderly in its inmost nook,
from which for twenty years she had never moved, and never would move
until softly carried to the house appointed for all living--Elizabeth,
the eldest--of whom Nathanael's soft voice grew softer as he spoke. His
betrothed hesitated to ask many questions about Elizabeth. The one of
whom she had it in her mind always to inquire, and whose name somehow
always slipped past, was Miss Anne Valery.

All this conversation--wherein the young lover bore himself much more
bravely than in regular “love-making”--a manufacture at which he was not
_au fait_ at all, caused the morning to pass swiftly by. Agatha thought
if all her life were to move so smoothly and pleasantly, she need never
repent trusting its current to the guidance of Nathanael Harper. And
when, soon after he departed, Emma Thornycroft came in, all smiles,
wonderings, and congratulations, Miss Bowen was in a mood cheerful
enough to look the happy _fiancée_ to the life; besides womanly and
tender enough to hang round her friend's neck, testifying her old
regard--until Master James testified his also, and likewise his general
sympathy in the scene, by flying at them both with bread-and-buttery
fingers.

“Ah, Agatha, there is nothing like being a wife and mother! you see what
happiness lies before you,” cried the affectionate soul, hugging her
unruly son and heir.

Miss Bowen slightly shuddered; being of a rather different opinion;
which, however, she had the good taste to keep to herself, since
occasionally a slight misgiving arose that either she was unreasonably
harsh, or that the true type of infantile loveableness did not exist in
the young Thornycrofts.

As a private penance for possible injustice, and also out of the general
sunniness of her contented heart, she was particularly kind to Master
James that day, and moreover promised to spend the next at the Botanic
Gardens--not the terrific Zoological!--with Emma and the babies.

“And,” added the young matron, with a gracious satisfaction, “you
understand, my dear, we shall--now and always--be most happy to see Mr.
Harper in the evening.”




CHAPTER VII.

Whether Mr. Harper, being a rather proud and reserved individual, was
not “so happy to be seen in the evening” as an attendant planet openly
following his sphered idol, or whether, like all true lovers, he was
very jealous over the lightest public betrayal of love's sanctity, most
certainly he did not appear until he had been expected for at least two
hours. Even then his manner was somewhat constrained. Emma's smiling,
half-jesting congratulations were nipped in the bud; she felt as she
afterwards declared--“quite frightened at him.”

Agatha, too, met him rather meekly, fearing lest she had led him into
a position distasteful to his feelings. She was relieved when,
taking little notice of herself, he fell into conversation with Mr.
Thornycroft--a serious discussion on political and general topics. Once
or twice, glancing at him, and noticing how well he talked, and how
manly and self-possessed he looked, Agatha began to feel proud of her
betrothed. She could not have endured a lover who--in not unfrequent
lover-like fashion--“made a fool of himself” on her account.

While the two gentlemen still talked, Miss Bowen stood secretly
listening, but apparently watching the rich twilight that coloured the
long sweep of the Regent's Park trees--a pretty sight, even though in
the land of Cockayne.

“There's a carriage at our door!” screamed Missy from the balcony,
receiving a hurried maternal reproof for ill-behaviour. Mrs. Thornycroft
wondered who the inopportune visitor could be.

It was a lady, who gave no name, but wished to know if Mr. Locke Harper
were there, and if so, would he come to the carriage and speak to her a
moment?

Nathanael did so, looking not less surprised than the rest of the party.
After five minutes had elapsed, he was still absent from the room.

“Very odd!” observed Emma, half in jest, half earnest; “I should inquire
into the matter if I were you. Let me see--I fancy the carriage is still
at the door. It would be rude to peep, you know, but we can inquire of
the maid.”

“No,” said Agatha, gently removing Mrs. Thornycrofts hand from the
bell; “Mr. Harper will doubtless tell me all that is necessary. He is
perfectly able to conduct his own affairs.”

It was speech implying more indifference than she really felt, for this
mysterious interview did not quite please her. She tried vainly to go on
talking with Mrs. Thornycroft, and actually started when she heard the
carriage drive off, and Nathanael come up-stairs.

His countenance was a good deal troubled, but he did not give the
slightest explanation--not even when Mrs. Thornycroft joked him about
his supposed “business.”

“With a lady, too! Not, I hope, a young lady?”

“What did you say?” he asked, absently, his eyes fixed afar off on
Agatha.

“I hope your visitor in the carriage was not a young lady?”

“No.” The answer was in a tone that put an end to any more jesting.

Nathanael sat down, and tried to take up the thread of politics just
dropped with Mr. Thornycroft, but only for a few minutes. Then, stealing
round by Miss Bowen's side, he whispered:

“I want to speak to you: would you mind coming home soon?”

“At once, if you wish it,” she answered, perceiving that something was
wrong, and feeling towards him too much of kindness and too little of
jealous love, to be in any way displeased at his strange behaviour.

“Will you do it, then, dear Agatha? Do it for me.”

Agatha was ill at contrivance, but she managed somehow to get away; and
before it was dark she and her betrothed were out in the broad terrace.

“Now,” said she, taking his arm kindly, “if anything is amiss, you can
tell me all as we walk home. Better walk than ride.”

“No, we must ride; I would not lose a minute,” Nathanael answered, as
he hurried her into a conveyance, and gave the order to drive to Bedford
Square.

Miss Bowen felt a twinge of repugnance at this control so newly
exercised over the liberty of her actions; but her good-heartedness
still held out, and she waited patiently for her lover to explain.
However, he seemed to forget that any explanation was necessary. He
leaned back in the corner quite silent, with his hand over his eyes.
Had she loved him, or not known that he was her lover, Agatha would soon
have essayed the womanly part of comforter, but now timidity restrained
her.

At length timidity was verging into distrust, when he suddenly said,
just as they were entering the square:

“I have used the dear right you lately gave me, in taking a strange
liberty with you and your house. I have appointed to meet me there
to-night one whom I must see, and whom I could not well see in any other
way--a lady--a stranger to you. But, stay, she is here!”

And as they stopped at the door, where another carriage had stopped
likewise, Nathanael unceremoniously leaped out, and went to this
“mysterious stranger.”

“Go in, dear Agatha,” said he returning; “go to your own sitting-room,
and I will bring her to you.”

Agatha, half reluctant to be so ordered about, and thoroughly bewildered
likewise, mechanically obeyed. Nevertheless, with a sort of pleasure
that this humdrum courtship was growing into something interesting at
last, she waited for the intruding “lady.”

That she was a lady, the first glimpse of her as she entered the
room leaning rather heavily on Nathanael's arm, brought sufficient
conviction. She was tall, and a certain slow, soft way of moving,
cast about her an atmosphere of sweet dignity. Her age was not easily
distinguishable, but her voice, in the few words addressed to Mr.
Harper, “Is your friend here?” seemed not that of a very young woman.

In her presence, Miss Bowen instinctively rose.

“Yes, she is here,” said Nathanael, answering the stranger. “You could
not have learnt what I wrote yesterday to my father and to Elizabeth.
She is Agatha Bowen, my--my wife that will be. Agatha, this lady is Miss
Anne Valery.”

It would be hard to say which of the two thus suddenly introduced to
each other was most surprised. However, the elder lady recovered herself
soonest.

“I was not aware of this; but I am very glad. And I need not now
apologise for thus intruding.”

She went up to the young betrothed, and took her by the hand warmly,
seeming at once and without further explanation to comprehend all; while
on Agatha's side, her look, her voice, her touch, communicated a sudden
trust and pleasure. It was one of those instinctive, inexplicable
attractions which almost every one has experienced more or less during
life. She could not take her eyes off Miss Valery; the face and manner
seemed at once familiar and strange. She had never been so impressed by
any woman before.

To show all hospitable attentions, to place an arm-chair for her guest,
and even, as she appeared weary, to entreat her to put aside her bonnet
and mantle--seemed quite natural to Miss Bowen, just as if they had
been friends of years. Anne thanked her courteously, let her do what she
would--but all the while looked anxiously at Nathanael.

“You know we have much to say. Is she aware of what I told you?”

“Not yet; I could not tell her; it shocked me so. Oh, my poor uncle!”

Agatha, who was unfastening her guest's cloak, turned round.

“What, your Uncle Brian? Has anything happened? You speak almost as if
he were dead.”

Anne Valery shivered.

“Dead! God forbid!” cried the young man, more deeply moved than his
betrothed had ever seen him. “But we have had ill news. He went as
interpreter on a Government mission, as he had often done before; he was
so popular among the Indians. But from some treachery shown them, the
tribe grew enraged and carried him off prisoner. Heaven only knows if
they have spared his life. But I think--I feel they will. He was so just
to the red men always. He is surely safe.”

“Yes, he is safe,” repeated Miss Valery, as if any alternative but that
were utterly incredible and impossible.

Nathanael continued: “The tidings reached Kingcombe yesterday, and our
friend here, coming to London, volunteered to bring them, and consult
with me. If there is any good deed to be done, it is sure to be done by
Anne Valery,” added Nathanael, stretching out his hand to hers.

She took it without speaking, being apparently much exhausted. And now
that her bonnet was off, and she sitting near the lamp, Agatha discerned
that Miss Valery was by no means young or beautiful. At all events, she
was at that time in an unmarried woman's life when it ceases to signify
whether she is handsome or not. Her hair at first seemed brown, but on
looking closer, there appeared on either side the parting broad silvery
lines, as if two snow-laden hands laid on the head had smoothed it down,
leaving it shining still.

Agatha turned from her passing examination of Miss Valery to the subject
in question, evidently so painful to her betrothed.

“You two wish to consult together? Do so. Pray stay here. I am very
sorry for your trouble, Mr. Harper. Anything that I can do for you or
your friend, you know”--and her voice dropped softly--“it is my duty
now.”

Nathanael looked at her, as if longing to clasp her to his heart and
say how happy he was; but he restrained himself and let his eyes alone
declare what he felt. They were very eloquent.

While this passed between the young people, the elder lady arose from
her chair; quietness seemed painful to her.

“Nathanael, every minute is precious to anxiety such as you must feel.
Have you thought what had better be done, since you are the right person
to do it?”

“As yet I have thought of nothing. And, alas! what _can_ be done?”

“Sit down, and let us consider,” said she, laying her hand on his, with
a force soft yet steady as that of her words.

Agatha was gliding out of the room, but her lover's quick movement and
Miss Valery's look stopped her.

“Do not go, Miss Bowen; you are not so unknown to me as I am to you. I
had much rather you stayed.”

So she took up her position a little distance off, and listened while
the two friends consulted; pondering the while on what a rare kind of
man Mr. Brian Harper must be to win such regard.

“You say the news came accidentally?” Mr. Harper observed. “It may not
be true, then.”

“It is. I had it confirmed to-day.”

“How?”

“I went to the Colonial Office myself.” (“Kind Anne Valery!” murmured
the young man.) “It was best to do so before I told you anything. You,
knowing the whole facts, would then decide more readily.”

“You are right and wise as ever. Now, tell me exactly what you heard.”

“While a treaty was going forward for the Government purchase of Indian
lands, there arose a quarrel, and two red men were upon slight grounds
punished cruelly. Then the whole tribe went off in the night, carrying
as prisoners two Englishmen--one by force. The other is believed to have
offered himself willingly as a hostage, until the reparation of what he
considered an injustice shown by his countrymen to the Indians. You may
guess who he was.”

“Uncle Brian, of course,” cried Nathanael, pacing the room. “Just like
him! He would do the maddest things for the sake of honour.”

Anne Valery's eyes flashed in the dark a momentary brightness, as if
they were growing young again.

“But his life is surely safe: all over the Indian country they respect
the very name of Brian Harper. No harm can touch him--it is quite
impossible!”

“I think so too.” And Miss Valery drew a long breath. “Still, such
danger is very terrible--is it not?” And she turned slightly, to include
Agatha in their conversation.

“Oh, terrible!” the girl cried, deeply interested. “But could he not
be sought for--rescued? Could not a party be despatched after him? If I
were a man I would head one immediately.”

Miss Valery, faintly smiling, patted Agatha's hand. It was easy to
see that this good heart opened itself at once to Nathanael's young
betrothed.

“That is what I had in my own mind, and should have spoken of to his
nephew here--a party of search which the Canadian Government, if urged,
would no doubt consent to. Nathanael could propose it--plan it. He is
both ingenious and wise.”

“Ah, he is; he seems to know everything!” cried Agatha warmly. “Surely,
Mr. Harper, you could think of something--do something?”

“I could,” said the nephew, slowly waking from a long interval of
thought. “I could do--what perhaps I ought, and will--for him who has
been more than a father to me.”

“What is that?” Agatha asked, while Miss Valery regarded him silently.

“To go back to America--head a search; or, if that is refused me, search
for him myself alone, and never give up until I find him--living or
dead.”

“Ah, do so! that will be right, generous, noble--you could not fail.”

“There is no saying, Agatha; only, if done, it must be done without
delay. I must start at once--in a week--nay a day--leaving England,
home, you, everything. That is hard!”

He uttered the last words inaudibly, and his left hand was suddenly
clenched, as he turned and walked once up the room and down again.

Agatha knew not what to say. Only a great love conscious of the extent
of its own sacrifice, would have had boldness to urge the like sacrifice
upon him.

Miss Valery's voice broke the troubled pause:

“You cannot start yet, Nathanael; you would have to apply to the
Government here. It would be impossible for you to leave under at least
a fortnight.”

“Ah!” he sighed, momentarily relieved, which was but natural “Yet, how
wrong I am! for my poor uncle's sake I ought not to lose a day. Surely
there would be some way of hastening the time, if inquiries were to be
set on foot.”

“I have made all that could be made; still, try yourself, though I fear
it is useless. The suspense is bitter, but what is inevitable must be
borne,” said Anne, with the smile of one long used to the practice of
that doctrine. “And in a fortnight--a fortnight is a long time, Miss
Bowen?”

The smile, flitting to Agatha, took a cheerfulness which hitherto in
the sad subject of her talk Miss Valery had not displayed. A certain
benevolent meaning, which Agatha rather guessed at than discerned, was
likewise visible there.

“Come,” said she, “for this night we can do nothing; but having settled
what we shall do, or rather what Mr. Harper will do, let us make
ourselves at rest. Be content, my dear Nathanael. Heaven will take care
of him for whom we fear.”

Her voice trembled, Agatha fancied; and the young girl thought how full
and generous was this kind woman's sympathy! likewise how good Nathanael
must be to have awakened so deep a regard in such an one as Miss Anne
Valery.

The clock struck ten. “We are early folk in Dorsetshire; but as my
old servant Andrews has secured my lodgings close by (I am a very
independent woman, you see, Miss Bowen), if you will allow me, I should
like to sit another half-hour, and become a little better acquainted
with you.”

Agatha gave her a delighted welcome, and astonished the Ianson family
by ordering all sorts of hospitalities. The three began to converse upon
various matters, the only remarkable fact being that no one inquired for
or alluded to a person, doubtless familiar to all--Frederick Harper. On
Agatha's part this omission was involuntary; he had quietly slipped
out of her thoughts hour by hour and day by day, as her interest in him
became absorbed in others more akin to her true nature.

But though every one tried to maintain the conversation on indifferent
topics, the feelings of at least two out of the three necessarily
drew it back to one channel. There they sat, running over the slight
nothings, probable and improbable, which in hard suspense people count
up; though still the worst Nathanael seemed to fear was the temporary
hardship to which his uncle would be exposed.

“And he is not so young as he used to be. How often have I urged him to
be content with his poverty and come home. He _shall_ come home now. If
once I get him out of these red fellows' hands, he shall turn his face
from their wild settlements for ever. He can easily do it, even if I
must stay in Canada.”

The young man looked at his newly-betrothed wife, and looked away again.
It was more than he could bear.

“Agatha,” said Miss Valery, after a pause, during which she had closely
observed both the young people--“I may call you _Agatha_, for the sake
of my friend here, may I not?”

“Yes,” was the low answer.

“Well then, Agatha, shall you and I have a little talk? We need not mind
that foolish boy; he was a boy, just so high, when I first knew him. Let
him walk up and down the room a little, it will do him good.”

She moved to the sofa, and took Agatha by her side.

“My dear”--(there was a rare sweetness in the way Miss Valery said the
usually unsweet words _my dear_)--“I need not say, what, of course, we
two both think, that she will be a happy woman who marries Nathanael
Harper.”

Agatha, with her eyes cast down, looked everything a young girl could be
expected to look under the circumstances.

“Your happiness, as well as your history, is to me not like that of an
entire stranger. I once knew your father.”

“Ah, that accounts for all!” cried Agatha, delighted to gain this
confirmation of her strange impression in favour of Miss Valery. “When
was this, and where was I?”

“Neither born nor thought of.”

Agatha's countenance fell. “Then of course it was impossible--yet I felt
certain--I could even believe so now--that I have seen you before.”

While the girl looked, a quick shadow passed over Anne Valery's still
features, for the moment entirely changing their expression. But soon
returned their ordinary settled calm.

“We often fancy that strangers' faces are familiar. It is usually held
to be an omen of future affection. Let me hope that it will prove so
now. I have long wished, and am truly glad, heart-glad to see you, my
dear child.”

She bent Agatha's forehead towards her, and kissed it. Gradually her
lips recovered their colour, and she began to talk again, showing
herself surprisingly familiar with the monotonous past life of the young
girl, and likewise with her present circumstances.

“How kind of you to take such an interest in me!” cried Agatha, her
wonder absorbed in pleasure.

“It was natural,” Anne said, rather hastily. “A woman left orphan
from the cradle as I was, can feel for another orphan. And though my
acquaintance with your father was too slender to warrant my intruding
upon you--still I never lost sight of you. Poor child, yours has been a
desolate position for so young a girl.”

“Ay, very desolate,” said Agatha; and suddenly the recollection
crossed her mind of how doubly she should feel that desolation when her
betrothed husband was gone, for how long, no one could tell! A regret
arose, half tenderness, half selfishness; but she deemed it wholly the
latter, and so crushed it down.

“How long have you been engaged to Nathanael?” asked Miss Valery, in a
manner so sweet as entirely to soften the abruptness of the question,
and win the unhesitating answer.

“A very short time--only a few days. Yet I seem to have known him for
years. Oh, how good he is! how it grieves me to see him so unhappy!”
 whispered Agatha, watching his restless movements up and down.

“It will be a hard trial for him, this parting with you. Men like
Nathanael never love lightly; even sudden passions--and his must have
been rather sudden--in them take root as with the strength of years. I
am very sorry for the boy.”

And Miss Valery's eyes glistened as they rested on him whom probably
from old habit she thus called.

“Well, have you done your little mysteries?” said he, coming up to the
sofa, with an effort to be gay. “Have you taken my character to pieces,
Anne Valery? Remember, if so, I have little enough time to recover it. A
fortnight will be gone directly.”

No one answered.

“Come, make room; I _will_ have my place. I _will_ sit beside you,
Agatha.”

There was a sort of desperation in his “I will” that indicated a
great change in the reserved, timid youth. Agatha yielded as to an
irresistible influence, and he placed himself by her side, putting his
arm firmly round her waist, quite regardless of the presence of a third
person--though about Anne there was an abiding spirit of love which
seemed to take under its shadow all lovers, ay, even though she herself
were an old maid. But perhaps that was the very reason.

“I was doing you no harm, Nathanael,” said she, smiling. “And I was
thinking, like you, how soon a fortnight will be gone, and how hard it
is for you to part from this little girl that loves you.”

The inference, so natural, so holy, which Miss Valery had unconsciously
drawn, Agatha had not the heart to deny. She knew it was but right that
she should love, and be supposed to love, her betrothed husband. And
looking at him, his suffering, his strong self-denial, she almost felt
that she did really love him, as a wife ought.

“If,” said the soft voice of the good angel--“if you had not known
each other so short a time, and been so newly betrothed, I should have
said--judging such things by what they were when I was young,”--here she
momentarily paused--“I should have said, Nathanael, that there was
only one course which, as regarded both her and yourself, was wisest,
kindest, best.”

“What is that?” cried he, eagerly.

“To do a little sooner what must necessarily have been done soon--to
take one another's hands--thus.”

Agatha felt strong, wild fingers grasping her own; a dizziness came
over her--she shrank back, crying, “No, no!” and hid her face on Miss
Valery's shoulder. Nathanael rose up and walked away.

When he returned, it was with his “good” aspect, tender and calm.

“No, Anne, I was wrong even to think of such a thing. Assure her I will
never urge it. She is quite right in saying 'No'--What man could expect
such a sacrifice?”

“And what woman would deem it such?” whispered Miss Valery. “But I
know I am a very foolish, romantic old maid, and view these things in
a different light to most people. So, my dear, be quite at rest,” she
continued, soothing the young creature, who still clung to her. “No one
will urge you in any way; _he_ will not, he is too generous; and I had
no right even to say what I did, except from my affection for him.”

She looked fondly at the young man, as if he had been still a little
child, and she saw him in the light of ancient days. These impelled her
to speak on earnestly.

“Another reason I had; because I am old, and you two are young. Often,
it seems as if the whole world--fate, trial, circumstance--were set
against all lovers to make them part. It is a bitter thing when they
part of their own free will. Accidents of all kinds--change, sorrow,
even death--may come between, and they may never meet again. Agatha,
Nathanael--believe one who has seen more of life than you--rarely do
those that truly love ever attain the happiness of marrying one another.
One half the world--the best and noblest half--thirst all their lives
for that bliss which you throw away. What, Agatha, crying?”

And she tried to lift up the drooping head, but could not.

“Nay, dear, I was wrong to grieve you so. Please God, you two may meet
again, and marry and be happy, even in this world. Come, Nathanael, you
can say all this much better than I. Tell her you will be quite content,
and wait any number of years. And, as to this parting, it is a right and
noble sacrifice of yours; let her see how nobly you will bear it.”

“Ay, Agatha, I will,” said the young lover firmly, as he stood before
her, half stooping, half kneeling--though not quite kneeling, even then.
But his whole manner showed the crumbling away of that clear but icy
surface with which nature or habit had enveloped the whole man.

Agatha lifted her head, and looked at him long and earnestly.

“I will,” he repeated; “I promise you I will. Only be content--and in
token that you are so, give me your hand.”

She gave him both, and then leaned back again on Miss Valery's shoulder.

“Tell him--I will go with him--anywhere--at any time--if it will only
make him happy.”

The same night, when Nathanael and Anne Valery had left her, Agatha sat
thinking, almost in a dream, yet without either sorrow or dread--that
all uncertainty was now over--that this day week would be her
wedding-day.




CHAPTER VIII.

“I wish, as I stated yesterday, that Miss Bowen's property should be
settled entirely upon herself. This is the only course which to my
thinking can reconcile a man to the humiliation of receiving a large
fortune with his wife.”

“An odd doctrine, truly! Where did you learn it?” laughed Major Harper,
who was pacing the Bedford Square drawing-room with quick, uneasy steps;
while his brother stood very quiet, only looking from time to time at
the closed door. It was the Saturday before the marriage; and Agatha's
trustee had come to execute his last guardianship of her and her
property. There was lying on a corner-table, pored over by a lawyer-like
individual--that formidable instrument, a marriage-settlement.

“Where did I learn it?” returned Mr. Harper, smiling. “Why, where I
learned most of my opinions, and everything that is good in me--with
Uncle Brian. Poor Uncle Brian!” and the smile faded into grave anxiety.

“Are you really going on that mad expedition?” said the elder brother,
with the air of a man who, being perturbed in his own mind, is ready to
take a harsh view of everything.

“I do not think it mad--and anything short of madness I ought to
undertake, and shall--for him.”

“Ay,” muttered the other, “there it is, Brian always made everybody love
him.”

“But,” continued Nathanael, “as I said last night to Miss Bowen, I shall
do nothing foolishly. We must hold ourselves prepared for the worst;
still, if better tidings should come--though that is scarcely possible
now--then perhaps----”

“You would not go!” cried Major Harper, eagerly. “Which would of course
delay your marriage. How very much better that would be.”

“Why so?” said the bridegroom, with a piercing look.

Frederick appeared confused, but threw it off with a laugh.

“Oh, women like a little longer courtship. They are never caught all in
a minute, unless they are quite indifferent as to who catches them. And
even then--'marry in haste'--you know the proverb--nay, don't be angry,”
 he added, as his brother turned abruptly away. “I was only jesting; and
a happy fellow like you can afford to be laughed at by a miserable old
bachelor like me.”

The momentary annoyance passed. Nathanael was, indeed, too happy to be
seriously vexed at anything.

“Still, for some reasons,” continued Major Harper, “I wish my fair ward
were not becoming my sister in such a terrible hurry. So much to be done
in one week, and by a man like me who hates the very name of business;
it is next to impossible but that some things should he slurred and
hurried over. For instance, there was no time, Grimes said, to draw up
a long deed of settlement, showing precisely where her money was
invested.”

“I told you I wanted nothing of the kind. I scarcely understand your
English law. But can it not be stated in plain legal form--a dozen lines
would surety; do it--that every farthing Agatha has is settled upon
herself exclusively from the day she becomes my wife.”

“That is done. I--I--in fact, Mr. Grimes had already advised such a
course as being the shortest.”

“Then what is the use of saying any more about it?”

“But, brother,” observed Major Harper, in whose manner was perceptible a
certain vague uneasiness, “if--though I assure you Grimes has transacted
all these matters, and he is a sharp man of business, while I am
none--still, if it would be any satisfaction to you to know particulars
concerning where Miss Bowen's money is invested”--

“In the funds; and to remain there by her father's will, to I think you
said.”

“Precisely. It _was_ invested there,” returned the brother, with an
accent so light on the past tense that Nathanael, preoccupied with other
things than money matters, did not observe it.

“Well, then, so let it stay. Don't let us talk any more about this
matter. I trust entirely to you. To whom should I trust, if not to my
own brother?”

At these hearty words Major Harper's face, quick in every mobile
expression of feeling, betrayed much discomposure. He walked the room in
a mood of agitation, compared to which the bridegroom's own restlessness
was nothing. Then he went to the farther end of the apartment, and
hurriedly read over the marriage-settlement.

“Faugh, Grimes! what balderdash is this?” he whispered angrily.
“Balderdash?--nay, downright lies!”

“Drawn up exactly as you desired, and as we arranged, Major Harper,”
 answered Mr. Grimes, formally. “Settling upon the lady and her heirs for
ever all her property now in the 'Three per Cent. Consols.'”

“Just heavens! and there's not a penny of it there!”

“But there will be by the time the marriage is celebrated, or soon
after--since you are determined to sell out those shares.”

“I wish I could--I wish to Heaven I could!” cried the poor Major, in a
despair that required all the warnings of his legal adviser to smother
it down, so as to keep their conference private. “I've been driven
nearly mad going from broker to broker in the City to-day. I might
as well attempt to sell out shares in the Elysian Fields as in that
confounded Wheal Caroline.”

“Fluctuations, my dear sir; mere fluctuations! 'Tis the same in all
Cornish mines. Yet, as I said, both concerning your own little property
and Miss Bowen's afterwards, I would wish no better investment. I have
the greatest confidence in the Wheal Caroline shares.”

“Confidence!” echoed the Major, ruefully. “But where is my brother's
confidence in me, when I tell him?--'Pon my life, I can't tell him!”

“There is not the slightest need; I have accurate information from the
mine, which next week will raise the shares to ten per cent, premium,
and then, since you are so determined to sell out that most promising
investment”--

“I will, as sure as I live. I vow I'll never be trustee to any young
lady again, as long as my name is Frederick Harper. However, if this
must stand”--and he read from the deed--“'all property now invested
in the Three per Cents.'--Oh, oh!” Major Harper shook his head, with a
deep-drawn sigh of miserable irresolution.

Yet there lay the parchment, sickening him with its prevaricating if
not lying face; and his invisible good angel kept pulling him on one
side--nay, at last pulled him halfway across the room to where, absorbed
in a reverie--pardonable under the circumstances--his brother sat.

“Nathanael, pray get out of that brown study, and have five minutes'
talk with me. If you only knew the annoyance I have endured all this
week concerning Agatha's fortune! How thankful I shall be to transfer it
from my hands into yours.”

“Oh, yes!” said the lover, rather absently.

“And I hope it will give you less trouble and more reward than it has
given me,” continued the elder brother, still anxiously beating about
the bush, ere he came to a direct confession. “I declare, I have been as
anxious for the young lady's benefit as if I had intended marrying her
myself.”

The bridegroom's quick, fiery glance showed Major Harper that he had
gone a little too far, even in privileged jesting.

But happily Nathanael had heard the door open. He hastily went forward
and met his bride. With her were Mr. and Mrs. Thornycroft, Dr. and Mrs.
Ianson, and another lady. The latter quickly passed out of the immediate
circle, and sat down in a retired corner of the room.

Agatha looked pale and worn out, which was no wonder, considering that
for several days she had endured, morning, noon, and night, all the
wearisome preparations which the kind-hearted Emma deemed indispensable
to “a really nice wedding.” But her betrothed noticed her paleness with
troubled eyes.

“You are not ill, my darling?”

“No,” said Agatha, abruptly, blushing lest any one should hear the
tender word, which none had ever used to her before, and blushing still
deeper when, meeting Major Harper's anxious looks fixed on them both,
she fancied he had heard. A foolish sensitiveness made her turn away
from her lover, and talk to the first person who came in her way.

Meanwhile Mr. Thornycroft and Dr. Ianson, with a knowledge that time was
precious, had gone at once to the business of the meeting, and were
deep in perusal of the marriage-settlement of which they were to be
witnesses.

“Why, Miss Bowen, you are a richer girl than I knew,” said Emma's worthy
husband, coming forward, with his round pleasant face. “I congratulate
you; at this particular crisis, when hundreds are being ruined by last
year's mania for railway speculation, it is most fortunate to have safe
funded property.”

Major Harper's conscience groaned within, and it was all over. He
resigned himself to stern necessity and force of circumstances--hoping
everything would turn out for the best.

Then they all gathered round the table, and Mr. Grimes droned out the
necessary formalities. The bride-elect listened, half in a dream--the
bridegroom rather more attentively.

“Are you quite sure,” said he, pausing, with the pen in his hand, and
casting his eyes keenly over the document--“are you quite sure this
deed answers the purpose I intended? This is the total amount of
property which Mr. Bowen left?”

And he looked from his brother to the lawyer with an anxiety which long
afterwards recurred bitterly to Agatha's mind.

Mr. Grimes bowed, and assured him that all was correct. So the young
bridegroom signed with a steady hand, and afterwards watched the rather
tremulous signature of his bride. Then an inexpressible content diffused
itself over his face. Putting her arm in his, he led her away proudly,
as though she were already his own.

Confused by her novel position, Agatha looked instinctively for some
womanly encouragement, but Emma Thornycroft was busily engaged in
admiring observation of some wedding presents, and Mrs. Ianson was worse
than nobody.

“Miss Valery!--what has become of Miss Valery? said the bride, her eyes
wandering restlessly around. Other eyes followed hers--Major Harper's.
Incredulously these rested on the silent lady in the background, whose
whole mien, figure, and attire, in the plain dark dress, and close
morning cap, marked her a woman undeniably and fearlessly middle-aged.

“Is it possible!” he exclaimed. “Can that be Anne Valery?”

The lady arose, and met him with extended hand. “It is Anne Valery, and
she is very glad to see you, Major Harper.”

They shook hands; his confused manner contrasting strongly with
her perfect serenity. After a moment Miss Bowen, who could not help
watching, heard him say:

“I, too, am glad we have met at last. I hope it is as friends!”

“I was never otherwise to you,” she answered, gently; and joined the
circle.

This rather singular greeting, noticed by none but herself, awakened
Agatha's old wrath against Major Harper, lest, as her romantic
imagination half suggested, the secret of Anne Valery's always
remaining Anne Valery, was, that his old companion had been first on
the illustrious Frederick's long list of broken hearts. If so, never was
there a broken heart that made so little outward show, or wore such a
cheerful exterior, as Miss Valery's.

But Agatha's own heart was too full of the busy trembling fancies
natural to her position to speculate overmuch on the hearts of other
people. Very soon Major Harper quitted the house, and the Thornycrofts
also. She was left alone with her lover and with Anne--Anne, who ever
since her arrival had seemed to keep a steady watch over Nathanael's
bride. They had rarely met, and for brief intervals; yet Agatha felt
that she was perpetually under this guardianship, gentle, though
strong--holding her fluctuating spirit firm, and filling her with all
cheerful hopes and tender thoughts of her future husband. She seemed to
grow a better woman every time she saw Anne Valery. It was inexpressibly
sweet to turn for a few moments each day from the lace and the ribbons,
the dresses and the bridecake, and hear Anne talk of what true marriage
really was--when two people entirely and worthily loved one another.

Only Agatha had not the courage to confess, what she began to hope was
a foolish doubt, that the “love” which Miss Valery seemed to take for
granted she felt towards Nathanael, was a something which as yet she
herself did not quite understand.

That Saturday afternoon, nevertheless, she was calmer and more at ease.
Signing the settlement had removed all doubts from her mind, and made
her realise clearly that she would soon be Mr. Harper's wife. And he
was so tender over her, so happy. Her marriage with him appeared to make
every one happy. That very day he had brought her a heap of letters from
Dorsetshire; her first welcome from his kindred--her own that would be.

They seemed to know all about her--from Anne Valery doubtless--and to
be delighted at Nathanael's choice. There was a kind but formal missive
from the old father, implying his dignified satisfaction that at
last one of his sons would marry to keep up the family name. From
the daughters there were letters varying in style and matter, but all
cordial except, perhaps, Eulalie's, who had years to wait before
_she_ married, and was rather cross accordingly. One note, in neat and
delicate writing, made Agatha's heart beat; for it was signed, “Your
affectionate _sister_, Elizabeth.”

She, who had longed for a sister all her life! Heaven was very good to
her, to give her all ties through one! It seemed, indeed, right and holy
that she should be married to Nathanael.

One only unutterable terror she had, which by a fortunate chance was
never alluded to by any one, and she was too much occupied to have it
often forced on her mind. This was, the thought of having to cross the
seas to Canada.

“Oh!” she sighed, as she sat, with the letters on her lap, listening to
what her lover said of his sisters and his family--“oh! that we could
do as your father seems to wish, and go and live in Dorsetshire, near
Kingcombe Holm.”

“I wish it too, if it would please you, dear; but it seems impossible.
How could I live in England without a profession?--even supposing Uncle
Brian did consent to return and settle at home. Sometimes, but very
rarely, he has hinted at such a possibility.--He has indeed, Anne,”
 continued the young man, noticing how keenly Miss Valery's eyes were
fixed on him.

“I am glad to hear it.”

“But he always said he would never return till he was grown either
very rich or very old. Alas; the latter chance may come, but the former
never! Poor Uncle Brian! If he comes at all, it is sure not to be for
many years.”

“Not for many years!” repeated Miss Valery, who was crossing over to
Agatha's side with a piece of rich lace she had been unfolding. As she
walked, her hand was unconsciously pressed upon her chest, a habit she
had after any quick movement. And, leaning over Agatha, she breathed
painfully and hard.

“My dear?” The young girl looked up. “Your sisters that are to be
desired me to give you from them a wedding-present. It was to be your
veil. But I had a whim that I would like to give you your veil myself.
Here it is. Will you accept it, with my love?”

[Illustration: Will you accept it, with my love  p090]

So saying, she laid over the bride's head a piece of old point lace,
magnificent in texture. Agatha had never seen anything like it.

“Oh, Miss Valery, to think of your giving me this! It is fit for a
queen!” And she looked at Mr. Harper, hesitating to accept so costly a
gift.

“Nay, take it,” said he smiling. “Never scruple at its costliness; it
cannot be richer than Anne's heart.” And he grasped his old friend's
hand warmly.

Miss Valery continued, with a slight colour rising in her cheek. “This
was given me twenty years ago for a wedding-veil. It has been wasted
upon me, you see, but I wish some one to wear it, and would like it to
be worn by a Mrs. Locke Harper.”

Agatha blushed crimson. Nathanael looked delighted. Neither noticed
Anne Valery; who, her passing colour having sunk into a still deeper
paleness, quietly returned to her seat, and soon after quitted the
house.




CHAPTER IX.

It was a most unconscionably early hour on the wedding morning when Mrs.
Thornycroft, who had insisted on mounting guard overnight in Bedford
Square, to see that all things were made ready to go off “merry as a
marriage bell,” came into Agatha's room and roused the bride.

“I never knew such a thing in all my life! Well, he is the most
extraordinary young man! What is to be done, my dear?”

“What--what?” said Agatha, waking, with a confused notion that something
very dreadful had happened, or was going to happen. She recollected that
this day on which she so early opened her eyes was some day of great
solemnity. It seemed so like that of her father's funeral.

“Don't be frightened, love. Nothing has occurred; only there is Mr.
Harper in the parlour below, wanting to speak with you. I never heard of
such a request from a bridegroom. It is contrary to all rules of common
sense and decorum.”

“Hush!” said Agatha, trying to collect her thoughts. “Tell me exactly
his message.”

“That he wished to speak with you at once, before you dress for church;
and will wait for you in the dining-room. What--you are not going to
do as he desires?--I wouldn't! One should never _obey_ till after
marriage.”

Agatha made no answer, but composedly began to dress. In a few minutes
she had once more put on the mourning, laid aside as she thought for
ever the night before, and had gone down-stairs to her bridegroom.

He was standing in the only available corner of the room not occupied
by a chaotic mass of hymeneal preparations, and gazing vacantly out
into the square, where the trees cast the long shadows of early morning,
while the merry little sparrows kept up a perpetual din.

As the door moved, Mr. Harper turned round. He had a sickly, worn look,
as if he had scarcely slept all night, and in his manner was a strange
mingling of trouble and of joy.

“Agatha--how kind! I ought to apologise,” he began, taking both her
hands. “But no! I cannot.”

“Nothing is wrong? No misfortune happened?”

“Misfortune? God forbid! Surely I do not look as if it were a
misfortune? I am only too glad--too happy. Whatever results from it, I
am indeed happy!”

“Then so am I, whatsoever it may be,” returned Agatha, softly. “Still,
do tell me.”

Her bridegroom, as he pressed her to his bosom, looked as if he had for
the moment forgotten all about his tidings; but afterwards, when her
second entreaty came, he took out a letter and bade her read, holding
her fast the while with a light firm hand on her shoulder. He seemed
almost to fear that at the news he brought she would glide out of his
grasp like snow.

“It is an odd hand--strange to me,” said Agatha. “Is it”--and a sudden
thought struck her--“is it----”

“Yes--thank God.”

“Oh, then, he is safe--I am so glad--so glad!” cried Agatha, in the
true sympathy of her heart. But her very gladness appeared to
affect contrariwise the troubled mood of her lover. His hand dropped
imperceptibly from her shoulder--he sat down.

“Read the letter, which came late last night. I thought you would be
pleased--that was why I thus disturbed you.”

Agatha, who had not yet learned the joy or pain of reading momently the
changes of a beloved face, immediately perused the letter. It was rather
eccentric of its kind:


“Lodge of O-me-not-tua.

“My dear Boy,

“If ever you get into the hands of those red devils, be not alarmed: it
isn't so bad as it seems. If you saw me now, in the big buffalo-cloak of
a medicine man, after smoking dozens of pipes of peace with every one
of the tribe, sitting at the door of my lodge, with miles of high
prairie-grass rolling in waves towards the sunset, you would rather
envy me than otherwise, and cry out, as I have often done, 'Away with
civilisation!'

“I am not scalped--I thought I should not be; the tribe (it wastes
valuable paper to write their long name, but you will have heard it)
the tribe know me too well. I make a capital white medicine-man. I might
have escaped any day, but, pshaw! honour!--So I choose to see a little
of the great western forests, until I know how my two red friends have
been treated on Lake Winnipeg shore. But in no case is any harm likely
to come to me, except those chances of mortality which are common to
all.

“You will receive this (which a worthy psalm-singing missionary conveys
to New York) almost as soon as the news of our adventure reaches Europe.
I send it to relieve you, dear nephew, and all friends, if I have any
left, from further anxiety concerning me, and especially from useless
search, as under no circumstances whatever shall I consent to return to
Montreal until it seems to me good.

“Therefore, stay in Europe as long as, or longer than, you planned, and
God prosper you, Nathanael, my good boy.

“Your affectionate uncle,

“Brian Locke Harper.

“I trust earnestly that this scrawl will reach Kingcombe Holm. Possibly,
no more news of me may ever reach there.--Yet I fear not, for He who is
everywhere is likewise in the wild western prairies; and life is not so
sweet that I should dread its ending. Still, if it does end, remember me
to my brother, my nieces, and all old friends, including Anne Valery. If
living, I shall reappear sometime, somewhere. B. L. H.”


“This is indeed happy news;--so far;” said Agatha, “though he seems in
no cheerful mood.”

“Melancholy was always his way at times.”

“What a strange man he must be!” she continued, still thinking more
of the letter than of anything else. “But”--and she turned to
Nathanael--“your mind is now at rest? You will not need to go to
America?”

“Not just yet.”

She looked at him a moment in surprise, for there was something peculiar
in his manner. She felt half angry with him for sitting so still, and
speaking so briefly, while she herself was trembling with delight. “Have
you told Miss Valery?” He shook his head. “Ah, then, go at once and tell
her, so happy as she will be! Do go.”

“Presently. Come and sit down here. I want to talk to you, Agatha.”

She let him place her by his side. He took her hands, and regarded her
earnestly.

“Do you remember what day this was to have been?”

“Was to have been?” she repeated, and instinctively guessed what he had
doubtless come to say. Her heart began to beat violently, and her eyes
dropped in confusion.

“I say '_was_,' because, if you desire it, it shall not be. I see the
very idea is a relief to you. I saw it in your sudden joy.”

Agatha was amazed--she had till this moment never thought of such a
thing. Mr. Harper's whole manner of speech and proceeding was so very
incomprehensible--like a lover's--that she told the entire truth in
simply saying “that she did not understand him.”

“Let me repeat it in plainer words.” But the plainer words would
not come; after one or two vain efforts, he sat with averted face,
speechless. At last he said abruptly, “Agatha, do you wish to defer our
marriage?”

As he spoke, his grasp of her hand was so fierce that it positively hurt
her. “Oh, let me go--you are not kind,” she cried, shrinking from the
pain, which he did not even perceive he had inflicted--so strange a
mood was upon him. He loosed her hand at once, and stood up before her,
speaking vehemently.

“I meant to be kind--very kind--just in the way that I knew would most
please you. I meant to tell you that I wish you to hold yourself quite
free, both as to this day or any other days: that you have only to say
the word, and--What a fool I am making of myself!”

Muttering the last words, he turned and walked quickly to the far end
of the room, leaving Agatha to meditate. It was a new thing to see
such passion in him; and while half frightened she was interested and
touched. She would have been more so, but for a certain something in
him which roused her pride, until she could not do as she had at first
intended--follow him, and ask why he was angry. The humility of love was
not yet hers.

So she sat without moving, her eyes fixed on her hand, where the red
mark left by her lover's grasp was slowly disappearing; until a minute
after, he approached.

“Was that the mark of my fingers on your wrist? Did I hurt you, my poor
Agatha?”

“Yes, a little.”

“Forgive me!” And sitting down beside her, he bent his lips to where
his rude grasp had been, kissing the little wrist over and over again,
though he did not speak.

His humility in this, the first ripple which had ever stirred their
calmest of all calm courtships, moved Agatha even more than his sudden
gust of passion. It is a curious fact, that some women--and they not of
the weaker or more foolish kind--like very much to be ruled. A strong
nature is instinctively attracted by one still stronger. Most certainly
Agatha had never so distinctly felt the cords--not exactly of love, but
of some influence akin thereto--which this young man had netted round
her, as when he began to draw them with a tight, firm hand, less that of
a submissive lover than of a dominant husband. She had never liked him
half so well as when, taking her hand once more into his determined
hold, he said--gently, indeed, but in a tone that would be answered--

“Now, tell me, what do you wish?”

“What do I wish?” echoed she, feeling as though some hard but firm
support were about to relax from her, leaving her trembling and insecure
to the world's open blasts. “I do not know--I cannot tell. Talk to me a
little; that will help me to judge.”

His eye brightened, though faintly. “I will speak, but you shall decide,
for all lies in your own hands. I thought this right, and came here
determined on telling you so.”

“Well?” said Agatha, expectantly.

“You promised me this hand to-day, believing I was to leave England at
once. My not leaving frees you from that promise--at least at present.
If you would rather wait until you know me better, or love me better,
then”--

“What then?”

“We will quite blot out this day--crush it--destroy it, no matter what
it was to have been. We will enter upon to-morrow, not as wife and
husband, but mere lovers--friends--acquaintances--anything you like.
Nay--I am growing a fool again.”

He put his hand to his forehead, sighed heavily, and then continued with
less violence.

“If this is what you wish--as from your silence I conclude it is--be
assured, Agatha, that I shall consent. I will take no wife against her
will. The kisses of her lips would sting me, if there were no love in
her heart.”

Agatha was still silent.

“Well then, it must be so,” said he, in slow, measured speech. “I must
go away out of this house, for I am no bridegroom. You may tell the
women to put away this white finery till it is wanted--which may
be--never!”

She looked up questioningly.

“I repeat--_never_. The currents of life, so many and so fierce, may
sweep us asunder at any moment. I may become mercenary, and choose a
richer wife even than yourself; or you may turn from me to some one more
pleasing, more winning--my brother, perhaps”--

Agatha recoiled, while the angry blood flashed from brow to throat. Her
lover saw it, and for the moment a strange intentness was in his gaze.
But immediately he smiled, as a man would at some horrible phantom of
his own creating, and continued with a softened manner:

“Or, if our own wills hold secure, many things may happen, as Anne
Valery forewarned us, to prevent our union. Even ere a month or two--for
if you are ever mine it must be as soon as then--but even within
that time one or other of us may have gone away where no loving, no
regretting, can ever call us back any more.”

Terrible was the imagined solitude of a world from which had passed
the only being who cherished her--the only being whom she thoroughly
honoured. Agatha drew closer to Nathanael.

“Still, for all that,” continued he, striving to keep even in his mind
the balance of honour and generous tenderness against the arguments of
selfish passion, “if for any reason you wish to postpone this day for
weeks, months, or years, I will take the chance. All shall be as
you deem best for your own happiness. As for mine--I will try to be
content.”

He paused a little, but it was a pause which no woman could
misunderstand. Then, turning back to her, he said in a low tone,

“When am I to go away, Agatha?”

Her brow dropped slowly against his arm, as, much agitated, yet not
unhappy, she whispered the one word “_Never_.”

For one moment Agatha felt against her own the loud convulsive throbs of
the heart that loved her--an embrace which, in its fierce rapture, was
like none that came before it, or after. When she learned to count and
chronicle such tokens of love, as one begins to count each wave when
the sand grows dry, this embrace remained to her as a truth, a reality,
which no succeeding doubts could explain away or gainsay.

It lasted, as such moments can but last, a space too brief to be
reckoned, dying out of its own intensity. Agatha slid from her lover's
arms, and swiftly passing out at the door, met Emma coming in. The
unlucky bridegroom was left to make his own explanation to Mrs.
Thornycroft, and how he performed that feat remains a mystery to this
day.

Solemnly, and much affected, the bride went up-stairs to put on her
wedding-garments.

Anne Valery had just arrived. She sat alone in Miss Bowen's
dressing-room, playing with the orange-wreath. Her face wore a
thoughtful, sickly, sad look, but the moment she heard some one at the
door this expression vanished.

“So, my dear, you have a rather unconscionable bridegroom, Mrs.
Thornycroft tells me. He has been here already.”

Suddenly all that had happened recurred to Agatha. She forgot her own
agitation in the joy of being the first to bring good news.

“Ah, you little know why he came. Uncle Brian--there is a letter from
Uncle Brian.”

And in her warm-heartedness of delight she threw her arms round Miss
Valery's neck. She was very much surprised that Anne did not speak a
single word, and that the cheek against which her young glowing one was
pressed felt as cold as marble.

“Are you not glad, Miss Valery?”

“Yes, very glad. Now will you go down-stairs and fetch me the letter?”

And, gently putting the young girl from her, Anne sat down! As Agatha
left the room, she fancied she heard a faint sound--a sigh or gasp; but
Miss Valery had not moved. She sat as at first--her hands clasped on her
lap, the veil of her bonnet falling over her face. And coming back some
minutes after, Agatha found her in precisely the same position.

“Thank you, dear.” She held out her hand for the letter, and then
retired with it to a far window. It took a good while to read. All the
time that the young bride was being dressed by Emma and the maid, Miss
Valery stood in that recess, her back turned towards them, apparently
reading or pondering over that strange scrawl from the Far West.

At last Mrs. Thornycroft gently hinted that there was hardly time for
her to return home and dress for the wedding.

“Dress for the wedding,” repeated Anne, absently. “Oh, yes; I remember,
it was to be early. No fear! I will be quite ready.”

She crossed the room, walking slowly, but at the door turned to look at
the bride, on whose head Emma was already placing the orange-blossoms.

“Doesn't she look pretty?” appealed the gratified matron-ministrant.

“Yes; very pretty.--God bless her!” said Miss Valery, and kissed her on
the forehead. Agatha quite started--the lips were so cold.

“Well!” cried Emma Thornycroft, as the door closed, “I do wish, my dear,
that little Missy had been grown up enough to be your bridesmaid instead
of that very quiet ordinary-looking old maid. But, after all, the
contrast will be the greater.”

At nine o'clock the bride's half of the wedding-party were all safely
assembled in Doctor Ianson's drawing-room, and everything promised to
go off successfully--to which result Emma, now all in her glory, prided
herself as having been the main contributor--and no doubt the kind,
active, sensible little matron was right.--When, lo!--there came an
unlucky _contretemps_.

Major Harper, who of course was to give away the bride, sent word that
on account of sudden business he could not possibly be at the church
before eleven. At that hour he promised faithfully to meet his brother
there. The note which he sent over was a very hurried and disjointed
scrawl. This was all that the vexed bridegroom knew of the matter.

So for two long hours Agatha sat in her wedding-dress, strangely quiet
and silent--sometimes playing with the wreath of orange-blossoms which
her lover had sent her, and which, being composed of natural flowers,
according to a whim of Mr. Harper's, was already beginning to fade.
Still she refused to put it aside, though the prudent Emma warned her it
would be quite withered before she reached the church; “as was sure to
be the case when people were so ridiculous as to wear real flowers.”

The good soul went about, half scolding, half crying; hoping nothing
might happen, or consoling herself with looking alternately at her
pretty peach-coloured dress, and her “James,” who walked about,
indulging in gay reminiscences of his own wedding, and looking the most
comfortable specimen imaginable of a worthy middle-aged “family man.”
 Nevertheless, in spite of Mr. Thornycroft's efforts to cheer up the
dreariness of the group, it was a great relief to everybody when, at the
earliest reasonable time, the bride's small party started, and were at
length assembled under the dark arches of Bloomsbury Church--darker than
usual today, for the morning had gloomed over, and become close, hot,
and thundery.

Punctually at eleven, but not a minute before, which--Emma
whispered--was certainly not quite courteous in a bridegroom, Mr. Harper
came in. There was no one with him.

“My brother not here?” he said in anxiety.

Some one hinted that Major Harper was never very punctual.

“He ought to be, this day at least,” observed Mr. Thornycroft. “And I
am confident I saw him not half-an-hour ago walking homeward round the
other side of Bedford Square. Do not be alarmed about him, pray.” This
last remark was addressed to Agatha, who, overpowered by the closeness
of the day, and by these repeated disasters, had begun to turn pale.

Nathanael watched her with a keen anxiety, which only agitated her the
more. Every one seemed uneasy and rather dull;--a circumstance not very
remarkable, since, in spite of the popular delusion on that subject,
very few ever really look happy at a wedding. It makes clearer to each
one the silent ghost sitting in every human heart, which may take any
form--bliss long desired, lost, or unfulfilled--or, in the fulfilling
changed to pain--or, at best, looked back upon with a memory
half-pensive if only because it is the past.

For forty interminable minutes did the little party wait in the dreary
church aisles, until the clock, and likewise the beadle, warned them it
was near the canonical hour.

“What are we to do?” whispered the bridegroom, looking towards Anne
Valery. She took his hand, and drawing it towards Agatha's which hung on
her arm, said earnestly:

“Wait no longer--life's changes will not wait Marry her _now_--nothing
should come between lovers that love one another.”

Anne's manner, so faltering, so different from her usual self,
irresistibly impressed the hearers. Silently the little group moved to
the altar; the clergyman, weary of delay, hurried the service, and in
a few minutes the young creatures who eight weeks before had scarcely
heard each other's names, were made “not two, but one flesh.”

It was all like a dream to Agatha Bowen; she never believed in its
reality until, signing that name, “Agatha Bowen,” in the register-book,
she remembered she was so signing it for the last time. A moment after,
Emma's husband, who had assumed the office of father to the bride,
cordially shaking her hand, wished all happiness to _Mrs. Harper_.

Agatha started, shivered, and burst into tears. It was a natural thing,
after so many hours of overstrained excitement; nor were her tears those
of unhappiness, yet they seemed, every drop, to burn on her bridegroom's
heart. To crown all, while these unlucky tears were still falling, some
one at the vestry door cried out, “There's Major Harper.”

It was indeed himself. He entered the church hurriedly--very pale--with
beads of dew standing on his brow.

“Are they married? Am I too late--are they married?” cried he.

Some uncontrollable feeling made Nathanael move to his wife's side, and
snatch her hand.

“Yes,” said he, meeting his brother's eye, “we are married.”

Major Harper sank into one of the vestry-chairs, muttering something,
inaudible to all ears save those which seemed fatally gifted with
preternatural acuteness--the young bridegroom's. Nathanael fancied--nay,
was certain--that he heard his brother say, “_Oh, my poor Agatha._” He
looked suddenly at his bride, whose weeping had changed into silent but
violent trembling. He dropped her hand, then with a determined air again
took possession of it, saying sharply to his brother:

“What is the reason of all this? Is anything amiss?”

“No, nothing--have I said anything?”

“Then why startle us thus? It is not right, Frederick.”

“Hush--perhaps he is ill,” whispered Anne Valery.

Major Harper looked up, and among the many inquiring eyes, met hers. It
seemed to fix him, sting him, rouse him to self-command.

“I am quite well,” he cried, with a hoarse attempt at laughter. “A gay
bachelor always feels doubly cheery at a wedding. So it is all over,
Nathanael? I beg your pardon for being too late; but I have been running
about town on important business, till I am half-dead. Still, let me
offer my congratulations to the bride.”

He came forward jauntily, seized Agatha's hand and was about to kiss
it, but for a slight shrinking on her part. The colour rushed to her
face--his darkened with an expression of uncontrollable pain. At least
so it appeared to one who never for a moment relaxed his watch--the
younger brother.

“Really,” said Mr. Thornycroft, who, during the few minutes thus
occupied, had bustled in and out of the vestry--“really, are we never
intending to come home? Somebody must make a diversion here. Major
Harper, will you take my wife? Miss Valery, allow me.”

This fortunate interference effected a change. All moved away a little
from the bridegroom, who was still standing by his wife's chair.

“Agatha--will you come?”

She mechanically rose; Mr. Harper drew her arm in his, and led her down
the aisle. There were a few stray lookers-on at the church-door, who
peered at them curiously. An inexplicable shadow hung over them. Never
were a newly-married couple more silent or more grave.

Only, as they stood on the entrance-steps that were wet with a past
shower of thunder-rain, and Agatha in her thin white shoes was walking
right on, her husband drew her back.

“It will not hurt me. Do let me go,” she said.

“No, you must not; you are mine now,” was the answer, with a look that
would have made the tone of control sound in any loving bride's ear the
sweetest ever heard.

He left Agatha in the church, and hurried a little in advance. His
brother and Mrs. Thornycroft were standing at the porch outside, Emma
laughing and whispering. And while waiting for the carriage, it so
chanced that Nathanael caught what they were saying.

“Why, Major Harper, you look as dull as if you had been in love with
Agatha yourself! And after what you confessed to me, I did positively
believe she was in love with you.”

“Agatha in love with me! really you flatter me,” said Major Harper,
looking down and tapping his boot, with his own self-complacent,
regretful smile.

“I did indeed think it, from her agitation when I hinted at such a
thing. And I never was more amazed in my life than when she told me she
was going to marry your brother. I do hope, poor dear Agatha”--

“Don't speak of her,” cried Major Harper, in a burst of real emotion.
“And she liked me so well, poor child! Oh, I wish to Heaven I had
married her, and saved her from”--

Here a voice was heard calling “Mr. Harper--Mr. Harper,” but the
bridegroom was nowhere to be seen. Some one--not her husband--put Agatha
into the carriage. Several minutes after, Nathanael appeared.

“Where have you been? Your wife is waiting.”

“My wife?” He looked round bewildered, as if the words struck him with
the awful irrevocable sense of what was done. Hurriedly he ran down the
steps, sprang into the carriage beside Agatha, and they drove away.

Through many streets and squares they passed, for the breakfast was
to be at Emma's house. Agatha sat for the first time alone with her
husband. The sun just coming out threw a soft crimson light through the
closed carriage blinds; the very air felt warm and sweet, like love.
Agatha's heart was stirred with a new tenderness towards him into whose
keeping she had just given her whole life.

For a little while she sat, her eyes cast down, wondering what he would
say or do, whether he would take her hand, or draw her softly to his
breast and let her cry her heart out there, as she almost longed to
do--poor fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterless girl, who in
her husband alone must concentrate every earthly tie.

But he never spoke--never moved. He leaned back in the carriage as pale
as death, his lips rigidly shut together, his eyes shut too, except that
now and then they opened and closed again, to show that he was not in a
state of total unconsciousness. But towards his young wife no look ever
once wandered.

At length he started as from a trance and saw her sitting there, very
quiet, for the pride of her nature was beginning to rise at this strange
treatment from him to whom she had just given herself--her all. She was
nervously moving the fingers of her left hand, where the newly placed
ring felt heavy and strange.

Nathanael snatched the hand with violence.

“Agatha,--are you not my Agatha? Tell me the truth--the whole truth. I
will have it from you!”

“Mr. Harper!” she exclaimed, half frightened, half angry.

His long, searching gaze tried to read her every feature--her pale
cheeks--her lips proud, nay, almost sullen--her eyes, from which the
softness so lately visible had changed into inquietude and trouble.
There was in her all maidenly innocence--no one could doubt that; but
nothing could be more unlike the shy tenderness of a bride, loving, and
married for love.

Slowly, slowly, the young bridegroom's gaze fell from her, and his
thoughts settled into dull conviction. All his violence ceased, leaving
an icy composure, which in itself bore the omen of its lasting stay.

“Forgive me,” he said, in a kind but cold voice, while his vehement
grasp relaxed into a loose hold. “You are my dear wife now, and I will
try to be a good husband to you, Agatha.”

Stooping forward, his lips just touched her cheek--which shrank from
him, Agatha scarcely knew why.

“I see!” he muttered to himself “Well, be it so! and God help us both!”

The carriage stopped. Honest Mr. James Thornycroft was at the door,
bidding a gay and full-hearted welcome to the bridegroom and bride.

What a marriage-day!




CHAPTER X.

“Are you quite warm there, Agatha?”

“Yes, thank you, quite warm,” she said, turning round a little, and then
turning back. She sat working, or seeming to work, at a large bay window
that fronted the sea at Brighton. Already there had come over her the
slight but unmistakable change which indicates the wife--the girl no
longer. She had been married just one week.

Her husband sat at a table writing, as was his habit during the middle
of the day, in order that they might walk out in the evening. He had
often been thus busy during the week, even though it was the first week
of the honeymoon.

The honeymoon! How different the word now sounded to Agatha! Yet she had
nothing to complain of. Mr. Harper was very kind; watchful and tender
over her to a degree which she felt even more than she saw. In the
mornings he read to her, or talked, chiefly upon subjects higher and
withal pleasanter than Agatha had ever heard talked of before; in the
evenings they drove out or walked, till far 

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