Chapter 16

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_ CHAPTER XVI

"So here is the result of family dinner-parties, and family-talks kept up till midnight!" said Mary Harper, with a little natural acerbity. "It is provoking for the mistress of a precise household to sit waiting breakfast for a whole hour."

"Mary, be charitable! We did not know you were ready, and we were so busy in my room. No laziness, was it, Agatha?"

"No, indeed: I think Miss Valery is the very busiest woman I ever knew. How can she get through it all?"

"Only by first making up my mind, and then acting upon it. Your husband's plan, too, I see. He and I shall get on as if we had worked together all our lives. Shall we not, my 'right-hand' Nathanael?"

He answered pleasantly; he looked quite a new man this morning. "Yes: I seem to understand your ways already. My first half-hour's business in the memorable 'Anne's room' at Kingcombe Holm has been like a return of old times. What a woman you are! You might have been brought up as I was by Uncle Brian. You have just his ways."

Anne smiled: and with a jest about the treble compliment he had contrived to pay, let the conversation slip past to other things.

Mary and Eulalie talked excessively. They were both much scandalised by their brother's new position and intended course of life, to be put in practice immediately.

Both the Miss Harpers were that sort of feminine minds which are like some kinds of flower-bells--the less fair the wider they open. Agatha wondered to see how very patient Miss Valery was over Mary's mild platitudes and Eulalie's follies. But Anne's good heart seemed to cast a shield of tenderness over everybody that bore the name of Harper. At length the young wife got tired of the after-breakfast discussion, which consisted of about a dozen different plans for the day--severally put up and knocked down again--each contradicting the other. The mild _laissez-faire_ of country life in a large family was quite too much for her patience; she longed to get up and shake everybody into common-sense and decision. But her husband and Miss Valery took everything easily--they were used to the ways at Kingcombe Holm.

"Oh, if your sister Harriet would but come in, or Mr. Dugdale!" she whispered to her husband, "surely they would settle something."

"Not at all; they would only make matters worse. And, look!--'speaking of angels, one often sees their wings.'--Is that you, Marmaduke?"

"Ay."

Mr. Dugdale walked in composedly through the sash-window, beaming around him a sort of general smile. He never attempted any individual greeting, and Agatha offering her hand, was met by his surprised but benevolent "Eh!" However, when required, he gave her a hearty grasp. After which, peering dreamily round the room, he pounced upon a queer-looking folio, and buried himself therein, making occasional remarks highly interesting of their kind, but slightly irrelevant to the conversation in general. Agatha amused herself with peeping at the title of the book--some abstruse work on mechanical science--and then watched the reader, thinking what great intellectual power there was in the head, and what acuteness in the eye. Also, he wore at times a wonderfully spiritual expression, strangely contrasting with the materiality of his daily existence. No one could see that look without feeling convinced that there were beautiful depths open only to Divinest vision, in the silent and abstracted nature of Marmaduke Dugdale. Nevertheless, he could be eminently practical now and then, especially in mechanics.

"Nathanael, Nathanael! just look here. This is the very contrivance that would have suited Brian in his old clay-pits. See!"

And he began talking in a style that was Greek itself to Agatha, but to which Nathanael, leaning over his chair-back, listened intelligently. It was very nice to see the liking between the two brothers-in-law--the young man so tender over the oddities of the elder one, who seemed such a strange mixture of the philosopher and the child. These were the sort of traits which continually turned Agatha's heart towards her husband.

"Talking of clay-pits," said Duke, with a gleam of recollection, "I've something for you here!" He drew out of the voluminous mass of papers that stuffed his pockets one more carelessly scrawled than the rest. "It's a plan of my own, for giving a little help to our own clay-cutters and to the stone-cutters in the Isle of Portland, who are shockingly off in the winter sometimes. Here's Trenchard's name down for a good sum--it will make him and Free-trade popular, you know."

And Mr. Dugdale smiled with the most amiable and innocent Machiavellianism.

Nathanael shook his head mischievously, greatly to the amusement of his wife, who had stolen up to see what was going on, and stood hanging on his arm and peeping over at the illegible paper.

"Excellent plan, Marmaduke--very long-headed. You give them Christmas dinners, and they give you--votes."

"Bless you, no! That would be bribery. We"--he reflected a minute--"Oh, we will only help those who have got no votes."

"Then the voters will all be against you."

Mr. Dugdale, much puzzled, pushed up his hair until it stood right aloft on his forehead. Soon a dawn of satisfaction reappeared. "All against us? Dear me, no! They would be pleased to see their poor neighbours helped on in the world, as you or I would, you know. They'd side at once with Trenchard and Free-trade. Come now, Nathanael, you'll assist? By the way, somebody told me you were very rich--or at least that your wife was an heiress. She looks a kind little soul She'll put her name down under Anne Valery's here?"

And he turned to Agatha with that air of frank goodness by which Marmaduke Dugdale could coax everybody round to his own ends.

"Ay, that we will, though I suppose I am not so rich as Miss Valery. Still, we have enough to help poor people--have we not?"

She appealed gaily to Mr. Harper, but he replied nothing. She persisted:

"We need not give much, since Mr. Trenchard and Miss Valery are both on the list before us. We'll give--let me see--fifty pounds. Ah, now, just go up-stairs and fetch me down fifty pounds!" said she, hanging caressingly on her husband's arm.

He looked down on her, and looked away. He had become very grave. "We will talk of this some other time, dear."

"But another time will not do. I want it now. I fear," she whispered, blushing--"I fear, before I married, I was very thoughtless and selfish. I would like to cure myself, and spend my money usefully, as Anne Valery does. Charity is such a luxury."

"Too dear a luxury for every one," said Nathanael sighing.

She looked up, scarcely believing him to be in earnest. Her open-hearted, open-handed nature was much hurt. She said, with a bitter meaning:

"I did not know I had such a very prudent husband."

He took no notice, but addressed himself to Mr. Dugdale. "Nay, Duke, you and your benevolences are too hard upon us young married people. We must tighten our purse-strings against you this time."

Agatha's cheek flamed. "But if _I_ wish it"--

"Dear, it cannot be, we cannot afford it."

Agatha moved angrily from his side, and soon after, though not so soon as to attract notice to him or herself, she quitted the room. Scarcely had she reached her own when she heard a step behind her.

"Are you angry with me, my wife, and for such a little thing?"

Nathanael stood there, holding both her hands, and looking down upon her with a face so kind, so regretful, so grave, that she felt ashamed of the quick storm which had ruffled her own spirit The cause of this did seem now a very "little thing." She hung her head, child-like, and made no answer.

"Why is it," said Mr. Harper, putting his arm round her--"why is it that we are always having these 'little things' rising up to trouble us? Why cannot we bear with one another, and take the chance-happiness that falls to our lot? It is not much, I fear"--

She looked uneasy.

"Nay, perhaps that is chiefly my fault. I often wish Heaven had given you a better husband, Agatha."

And his countenance was so softened, mournful, and tender, that Agatha's affection returned. There was something childish and foolish in these small wranglings. They wore her patience away. For the twentieth time she vowed not to make herself unhappy, or restless, or cross, but to take Nathanael's goodness as she saw it, believing in it and him. Since according to that wise speech of Harriet--which even Anne Valery smiled at and did not deny--the best of men were very disagreeable at times, and no man's good qualities ever came out thoroughly until he had been married for at least a year.

With a tear in her eye and a quiver on her lip, Agatha held up her young face to her husband. He kissed her, and there was peace.

But though he had made this concession, and made many others in the course of the next hour, to remove from her mind every thought of pain, still he showed not the slightest change of will regarding the cause of dispute. And perhaps in her secret heart this only caused his wife to respect him the more. It is usually the weak and erring who vacillate. Firmness of purpose, mildly carried out, implies a true motive at the root. Agatha began to think whether her husband might not have some reason for his conduct; probably the very simple one of disliking to see his name or her own paraded in a subscription-list, or mixed up with a political clique.

Nevertheless, he puzzled her. She could not think why, with all his tenderness, he so often put his will in opposition to her own, and prevented her pleasure; why he was so slow in giving her his confidence; why he more than once plainly stated that there was "a reason" for various disagreeable whims, yet had not told her what that reason was. All these were trivial things--yet in the early sunrise of married life the least molehill throws a long black shadow.

"I will be a wise woman. I will not disquiet myself in vain," said the little wife to herself, as her husband left her, in answer to repeated calls from some feminine voice which had just entered the house, and was immediately audible half over it. Harriet Dugdale's, of course. To her--sharp-sighted and merry-tongued woman that she was--Agatha would not for worlds have betrayed anything; so, dashing cold water on her forehead to hide the very near approach to tears, she quickly descended.

Harrie was in a state of considerable indignation, mixed with laughter. "I never knew such people as you are! and certainly never was there the like of my Duke there. He set off to fetch you all to Corfe Castle--his own proposition. I waited an hour and a half--then I took the pony to see after you--and lo!--there he is, sitting quite at his ease. Oh, Duke--Duke!"

She shook her riding-whip at him twice before she disturbed him from his book.

"Eh, Missus--what do'ee want, my child?"

"Want? Don't you see what a passion we're all in? Abuse him, Anne--Agatha--Nathanael! Do! I've no patience with him. Didn't he say himself that he would take us all to Corfe Castle? Oh, you--you"---- And Harrie looked unutterable things.

Mr. Dugdale gazed round placidly. "Really, now, that's a pity! Never mind, Missus! I only forgot." And patting her hand with ineffable gentleness and good-humour, he opened his book again.

"Oh, you--you"--here she put on a melodramatic scowl--"you inconceivably provoking, misty, oblivious, incomprehensible old darling!"

And springing upon the back of his chair, Harrie hugged him to a degree that compelled the unfortunate philosopher to renounce his book. He took the caresses very patiently, and smiled with superior love upon his merry wife.

"That'll do, Missus! Eh--and before folk, too! Now don't'ee, my child!"

And shaking himself, hair and all, into something like order, he picked up the folio, tucked it under his arm, and wended his way through the window slowly down the lawn.

Agatha glanced at her husband, who stood talking to Miss Valery. She wondered what Nathanael would say if _she_ were to take a leaf out of his sister's book, and treat her own liege lord after the unceremonious fashion of Harrie Dugdale!

"There--off he goes, quite cross, no doubt." (He was smiling as benevolently as if he could embrace the whole world.) "But we must catch him at the stables. I brought White-star galloping after me, and Duke will rouse up when he sees his beloved horse. You shall take my pony, Agatha. Of course you can ride?"

Agatha could--in a London riding-school and London parks. She had her doubts about the country, but felt strongly inclined to try; for Mrs. Dugdale had entered Kingcombe Holm like a breath of keen fresh air, putting life and spirit into everybody. Nathanael made no opposition, only he insisted on Mary's quiet grey mare being substituted for Harrie's skittish pony.

"I shall ride with you part way," said he, "and then leave you in Mr. Dugdale's charge, while I stay at Kingcombe."

"Why so?"

"I have business there."

Still the same weary "business" which he never explained or talked about, yet which always seemed to rise up like a bugbear on their pleasures, until Agatha was sick of the sound of the word!

She turned away, and put herself altogether under Mrs. Dugdale's care to be equipped for the ride.

Anne Valery, coming in with her quiet common sense, succeeded in making up the party, which, with one exception, Harrie had left to make itself up according to its own discretion. When Mrs. Harper descended, she found all settled for the spending of a day at Corfe Castle, in picnic style--glorious and free--with a moonlight canter home in the evening. No one was omitted except the Squire, who with considerable dignity declined such _al fresco_ amusements; and Anne Valery, who promised to peep in upon them as she passed the Castle on her way to her own house, after spending a few hours with Elizabeth.

Agatha had never been on horseback since she was married. It made her feel like a girl again, and brought back all the wild spirits of her youth, now repressed in propriety by her changed life--until sometimes she hardly knew herself, or fancied she was growing into that object of her former scorn, an ordinary young lady. She cast the subdued and meek "Mrs. Locke Harper" to the winds, and dashed wildly back for this day at least into "Agatha Bowen."

Her husband, putting her on her horse, with many injunctions, was surprised to see her give him a careless nod and dart off delightedly, as if she and the grey mare had wings. The Dugdales followed, a wild pair, for Marmaduke was quite another being on horseback.

"Look at him, Agatha,"--and Harrie's laugh ringing on the wind caused the mild grey mare to seem rather restless in her mind. "Did you think my Duke could ride as he does? He never looks so well as on horseback. He is a perfect Thessalian!"

Agatha was amused to find classic lore in Harrie Dugdale, and she gave most cordial admiration to Duke. "He is a magnificent rider; he sits the horse just as if he were born to it."

"Bless him! so he was. He rode his father's horses at four years old, and went hunting at fourteen. And he has such a beautiful temper, and such a firm will besides--that he could manage the wildest brute in the county. See there!"

White-star had become rather obstreperous, showing his spirit; his master carelessly lent down, giving him a box on each ear, just as if the stately blood horse had been a naughty child; then composedly rode him back to the two ladies.

"Harrie! Missus! do'ee come on! Nathanael is behind, all right. Come along!"

He gave his wife's pony a switch, and off they dashed, she laughing merrily, and he galloping away with such ease and grace that Agatha could not take her eyes off him.

She looked after them with a vague sense of envy,--this odd married pair, in whose union so many things appeared unequal and peculiar, except for one thing--the love which hallowed and perfected all. When her own husband came up, she, unwilling to talk, and dreading above all that his quick eye should detect anything amiss in her, pushed her horse forward, and calling to Nathanael to follow, rode on after the Dugdales.

Ere they had ridden far, all her wild spirits came back again, and all her wifely feelings too, for her husband seemed as happy as herself, and entered into all her frolics. They swept along like two children, across the breezy moors, purple and fragrant, down by the hilly sheep-paths, lying bare in autumn sunshine. Nathanael proved himself almost as good a horseman as Duke Dugdale: a great pleasure to Agatha, for of all things women do like a man to be manly. Nay, once, in the descent of a hill so steep, that a Cockney equestrian would have been frightened out of his seven senses, Nathanael's prudent daring stood out in such bold relief that Agatha was perforce reminded of the day when he snatched little Jemmie from the bear, the first day when her liking and respect had been awakened towards him. She hinted this, and said how pleasant it was to feel that one's husband was, as she expressed it, "a man that could take care of one."

"And how very foolish and helpless townfolk--drawing-room gentlemen, appear in the country! I wonder," and she could not help telling him the comical idea, though not very complimentary to her husband's brother--"I wonder how Major Harper would look on horseback?"

"What did you say? The wind blew that sentence away."

She hardly liked to repeat it exactly, but said something about Major Harper and his coming down to Dorset.

Nathanael spurred his horse forward without replying. A minute afterwards he returned to his wife's side, bringing her a great bunch of heather, with yellow gorse mixed, and made jokes about the Dorsetshire saying, "When gorse is out of bloom kissing's out of season." And evermore he looked secretly at her, to notice if she laughed and was happy, had roses on her cheeks, and pleasure in her eyes. Seeing this, the husband appeared contented and at ease.

They and the Dugdales rode merrily into Kingcombe, much to that good town's astonishment. The equestrian quartette at Marmaduke's door was a sight that the worthy inhabitants of that sleepy street would not get over for a week. Everybody gathered at doors and windows, and a small group of farmers at the market quadrangle stared with all their eyes. The sensation created was enormous, and likewise the crowd,--almost as dense as a wandering juggler gathers in a quiet suburban London street! Agatha, passing through it, laughed till she could laugh no longer.

Her husband, pleased at her gaiety, came to lift her off her horse.

"Not a bit of it!" Mrs. Dugdale cried. "Keep your seat, Agatha; no time to lose; on we go in a minute, when Duke has been to get his letters. Here, Brian, my pet."--There had rushed out round her horse a cluster of infantine Dugdales.--"Lift Brian up here, Uncle Nathanael, and I'll give him a canter. Bravo! He's Pa's own boy, born for a rider! Come along, Auntie Agatha."

Agatha would willingly have followed down the street. She was amused by the daring of the mother and the boy, and amused especially by her new title of "Auntie Agatha."

"Do let me go, Mr. Harper; I don't want to dismount, indeed."

"But I have something to say to you--just a few words. We must decide to-day about the house, you know."

"Never mind the house; I had rather not think about it." And the mere shadow of past vexation still vexed her. "Ah!" she added, entreatingly, "do be good to me--do let me enjoy myself for once!"

"I would not prevent you for the world." He dropped her bridle with a sigh, and turned back among his little nephews.

Fred had coaxed the horse from the groom, and Gus was bent on mounting; there was a dreadful struggle, and angry cries for Uncle Nathanael. In the midst of it Uncle Nathanael appeared, like an angel of peace, and setting the boys one behind another on his horse's back, led the animal up and down carefully.

Agatha looked after them, thinking how kind and good her husband was. She wished she had not refused so hastily such a simple request; she began to think herself a wretch for ever contradicting him in anything.

The little party started again, increased by the arrival of the family carriage from Kingcombe Holm, wherein sat Mary and Eulalie. To these were speedily added the three young Dugdales, all in high glee. And it spoke well for the Miss Harpers, whom Agatha was disposed to like least of her husband's relatives, that they made very lenient and kindly aunts to those obstreperous boys.

Agatha was crossing the bridge which bounded South Street, trying to make her horse stand still while Mr. Dugdale pointed out the identical red cliff where the Danes drew up their ships, and laughing with Harrie at the notion of how terribly frightened the quiet souls in Kingcombe would be at such an incursion now, when Nathanael came on foot to his wife's side.

"Why did you start without speaking to me?"

"I could not help it; I thought you were gone. You will come after us soon?" And she felt angry with herself for having momentarily forgotten him.

"I will come when I have settled this business of the house. You understand, Agatha, I am obliged to decide to-day? You will not blame me afterwards?"

"Oh, no--no!" His extreme seriousness of manner jarred with her youthful spirits. She did not think or care about what he did, so that for this day only he let her be gay and happy. From some incomprehensible cause, his very love seemed to hang over her like a cloud, and so it had been from the beginning. She did so long to dash out into the sunshine of her careless, girlish life, and scamper over the beautiful country with Harrie Dugdale.

"Oh, no!" she repeated only wishing to satisfy him. "Take any house you like, and come onward soon; and oh, do let us be cheerful and merry!"

"We will!" His bright look as she patted his shoulder--a very venturesome act---gave her much cheer; and when, after she had cantered a good way down the road, she turned and saw him still leaning on the bridge looking after her, her heart throbbed with pleasure. Despite all his reserves and peculiarities, and her own conscious failings, there was one thing to which she clung as to a root of comfort that would never be taken away, and would surely bear blossom and fruit afterwards--the belief that her husband truly loved her.

"If so," she thought, "I suppose all will come right in time, and Agatha Harper will be as happy as, or happier than, Agatha Bowen."

So on she went, yielding to the delicious excitement of being on horseback. She was also much interested by the country round about, which appeared to her as old, desolate, and strange as if she had been a Thane's daughter riding across the moors to the gates of that renowned castle which, as Harrie declared, putting on the physiognomy of some school-child drawling out a history-lesson, "was celebrated for being the residence of the ancient Saxon kings."

"And this was the place," continued she in the same tone, pointing to an old gate-post--"this was the place where His Majesty's most illustrious horse did stop when His Majesty's most sainted body was dragged along by the leg, in the stirrup, on account of the wound given him when he was a-drinking at the castle-door, by his stepmother, Queen Elfrida. All of which is to be seen to the present day."

Agatha first laughed at this comical view of the subject, then she felt a little repugnance at hearing that stern old tragedy so lightly treated. As she walked her horse along the road which might have been, and probably was, the very same Saxon highway as in those times, she thought of the wounded horseman dashing out from between those green hills and of the murdered body dropping slowly, slowly from the saddle, dragged in dust, and beat against stones, until the woman that loved him--for even a king might have had some woman that loved him--would not have known the face she thought so fair.

It was an idle fancy, but beneath it her tears were rising; chiefly for thinking, not of "The Martyr," but of the woman--whoever she was--(Agatha had not historical erudition enough to remember if King Edward had a wife)--to whom that day's tragedy might have brought a lifetime's doom. She began to shudder--to feel that she too was a wife--to understand dimly what a wife's love might come to be--also something of a wife's terrors. She wished--it was foolish enough, but she did wish that Nathanael had not been riding on horseback, or else that, in picturing to herself the dead head of the Martyr dragged along the road, she did not always see it with long fair hair. And then she wondered if these horrible fancies indicated the dawning of that feeling which she had deceived herself into believing she already possessed. Was she beginning to find out the difference between that quiet response to secured affection, that pleasant knowledge of being loved, and the strong, engrossing, self-existent attachment which Anne Valery described--the passion which has but one object, one interest, one joy, in the whole wide world?

Was she beginning really _to love_ her husband?

The answer to that question involved so much, both of what had been, and what was yet to come, that Agatha dared not ponder over it.

"Mrs. Harper! Mrs. Harper!" She mused no longer, but hurried on after the Dugdales.

It was not to point out the Castle that Harrie had been so vociferous, but to show a place which she evidently deemed far more interesting.

"Do you see that white house far among the trees? That's where my Duke was born. He lived there in peace and quietness till he got acquainted with Uncle Brian, and came to Kingcombe Holm and fell in love with me."

"How did he do it? I want to know what is the fashion of such things in Dorset."

"How did Duke fall in love with me? Really I can't tell. I was fifteen or so--a mere baby! He first gave me a doll, and then he wanted to marry me!"

"But how did he make love, or 'propose' as they call it?" persisted Agatha, to whom the idea of Marmaduke Dugdale in that character was irresistibly funny.

"Make love? Propose? Bless you, my dear, he never did either! Somehow it all came quite naturally. We belonged to one another."

The very phrase Anne Valery had used! It made Nathanael's wife rather thoughtful. She wondered what was the feeling like, when people "belonged to one another."

But she had no time for meditation; for now the great grey ruin loomed in sight, and everybody, including the shouting boys in the carriage behind, was eager to point it out, especially when Agatha made the lamentable confession that she had never seen a ruined castle in her life before.

"And you might go all over England and not find such another as this," said Mr. Dugdale, riding up to her with a smile of great satisfaction. "Nobody thinks much of it in these parts, and few antiquarians ever come and poke about it. Perhaps it's as well. They couldn't find out more than we know already. But no!"--and his eye, taking in the noble old ruin arched over by the broad sky, assumed its peculiar dreamy expression--"We don't know anything. Nobody knows anything about this wonderful world!"

Agatha looked around. On the top of a smooth conical hill, each side of which was guarded by other two hills equally smooth and bare, rose the wreck of the magnificent fortress, enough of the walls remaining to show its extent and plan. Its destroyer had been--not Father Time, who does his work quietly and gracefully--but that worse spoiler, man. Huge masses of masonry, hurled from the summit, lay in the moat beneath, fixed as they had been for centuries, with vegetation growing over them. Some of the walls, undermined and shaken from their foundations, took strange, oblique angles, yet refused to fall. Marks of cannon-balls were indented on the stonework of the battered gateway, which still remained a gateway--probably the very same under which Queen Elfrida, "fair and false," had offered to her son the stirrup-cup.

The general impression left on the mind was not that of natural decay, solemn and holy, but of sudden destruction, coming unawares, and struggled against, as a man in the flower of life struggles with mortality. There was something very melancholy about the ruined fortress left on the hill-top in sight of the little town close below, where its desolation was unheeded. Agatha, sensitive, enthusiastic, and easily impressed, grew silent, and wondered that her companions could laugh so carelessly, even when passing under the grey portal into the very precincts of the deserted castle.

"We shall not find a soul here," said Harrie; "scarcely anybody ever comes at this season, except when our Kingcombe Oddfellows' Club have a picnic on this bowling-green; or schoolboys get together and climb up the ivy to frighten the jackdaws--my husband has done it many a time--haven't you, Duke?"

"I see mamma," vaguely responded Duke, who was busy lifting his boys down from the carriage, with a paternal care and tenderness beautiful to see. He then, with one little fellow on his shoulder, another holding his hand, and a third clinging to his coat-tails, strode off up the green ascent, without paying the slightest attention to Mrs. Harper. Which dereliction from the rules of politeness it never once came into her mind to notice or to blame.

"There they go! Nobody minds me; it's all Pa!" said Mrs. Dugdale, with an assumption of wrath; a very miserable pretence, while her look was so happy and fond. "You see, Agatha, what you'll come to--after ten years' matrimony!"

Agatha's heart was so full, she could not laugh but sighed, yet it was not with unhappiness.

He and Harrie wandered over the castle together, for the two Miss Harpers did not approve of climbing. The little boys and "Pa" reappeared now and then at all sorts of improbable and terrifically dangerous corners, and occasionally Mrs. Dugdale made frantic darts after them. Especially when they were all seen standing on one of the topmost precipices, the father giving a practical scientific lesson on the momentum of falling bodies; in illustration of which Harrie declared he would certainly throw little Brian out of his arms, in a fit of absence of mind, thoroughly believing the child was a stone.

At last, when their excitement had fairly worn itself out, and even Mrs. Dugdale's energetic liveliness had come to a dead stop in consequence of a fit of sleepiness and crossness on the part of Brian--Agatha roamed about the old castle by herself; creeping into all the queer nooks with a childish pleasure, mounting impassable walls so as to find the highest point of view. She always had a great delight in climbing, and in feeling herself at the top of everything.

It was such a strange afternoon too, grey, soft, warm, the sun having long gone in and left an atmosphere of pleasant cloudiness, tender and dim, the shadowing over of a fading day, which nevertheless foretells no rain, but often indicates a beautiful day to-morrow. Somehow or other, it made Agatha think of Miss Valery; nor was she surprised when, as suddenly as if she had dropped out of the sky, Anne was seen approaching.

"Let me help you up these stones. How good of you to come, and how tired you seem!"

"Oh no, I shall be rested in a minute. But I am not quite so young as you, my dear."

She came up and leaned against the ivy-wall that Agatha had climbed, which was on the opposite side of the hill to the bowling-green, the gathering-spot of the little party. It was a nook of thorough solitude and desolation, nothing being visible from it but the widely extended flat of country, looking seaward, though the sea itself was not in view.

"Why did you climb so high?" said Agatha, as, earnestly regarding her friend, she perceived more than ever before the difference in their years, and felt strongly tempted to wrap her strong young arms round Miss Valery's waist, and support her with even a daughter's care.

"I shall be well presently," Anne repeated, with cheerfulness. "I have not climbed up to this spot for many years. I thought I would like to come here once again."

She sat down on a flat stone raised upon two others.

"What a comfortable seat! It might have been made on purpose for you."

"So it was--long ago. No one has disturbed it since. Come, my dear."

She drew Agatha beside her--there was just room for two; and they sat in silence, looking at the view, except that Agatha sometimes cast her eyes about rather restlessly. It was a magical answer to her thoughts when Anne observed:

"I met your husband as I drove through Kingcombe. He desired me to tell you he was detained a little, but would be here ere long. How very thoughtful and good he is!"

Agatha said "Yes"--a mere "Yes," quiet and low.

Miss Valery made no further remark, but sat a long time, absently gazing over the low-lying sweep of country which gradually melted into a greyness that looked like sea.

"Is it the sea?" asked Mrs. Harper.

"No, it lies yonder, behind the hill opposite--where there is the smoke of the furze burning. From that spot I should think one could trace the line of coast almost to Weymouth. Do you remember ever seeing Weymouth?"

"No! how could I?" returned Agatha, surprised by the suddenness of the question, and its form. "I never was in Dorsetshire before."

Anne said something, either in jest or earnest, about one's often fancying one has seen places in a previous existence, and changed the theme by pointing out the view on the other hand. "My house, Thornhurst, lies in that direction. You must come and see me soon, and we will talk more pleasantly than I can do to-day. It is so strange to be sitting here with Mrs. Locke Harper."

"Why so? What makes you so often call me by that name?"

"Only a whim I have. But is it not a good name--a beautiful name? Ah, you child!--you poor little one! To think of _you_ becoming Mrs. Locke Harper!"

There was a pathos--a kind of tender retrospection in Anne Valery's manner as she touched the brown curls and smoothed the neat dress, which--riding hat and skirt having been laid aside or tucked up--made a pretty mountain-maiden out of Nathanael's wife. Agatha never could understand the peculiar fondness with which Miss Valery sometimes regarded her--to-day especially. She seemed constantly on the point of saying something--which she never did say. At last she rose from the stone seat.

"We will talk another day. We must go now." Yet she lingered. "Just let us stand here, in this exact spot; and look at the view." She looked--her eyes absorbing it from every point, as one drinks in, for the last time, a long-familiar draught of landscape beauty.. "My dear!"

The whisper was strangely soft--even solemn.

"You will remember, dear, it was I that brought you here first. You'll come here sometimes, will you not?"

"Oh, very often indeed! It is a delicious place."

"I thought so when I was your age. And you'll not forget the stone seat, Agatha? I hope no one will disturb it. Good-bye! poor old stone."

Saying this in a whisper, she stooped and patted it with her hand--the thin white hand that might once have been so round, pretty, and young. The act, natural even to childishness, might have made Agatha smile, but for a certain something about Miss Valery that invested with dignity even her simplicities. So, merely echoing "Goodbye, old stone!" she followed Anne down the slope.

After a loud-lamenting adieu, especially from the Dugdale boys, Miss Valery mounted her little carriage and drove away into the gathering shadow--Agatha knew not where.

"What a good woman she is! I wish we were all like her!" she said, thoughtfully.

"My dear, nobody can be, especially with a husband and four children. It is a blessing to society in general that Anne Valery never married."

"But people do marry late in life sometimes. So may she. Do you think she will?"

"Can't say! Don't know! Very mysterious!" ejaculated Harrie. "My brother Fred once hinted--and Fred was a very fascinating young fellow when I was a child--But all that belongs to the year One. I'll hold my tongue."

Agatha had too much delicacy to inquire further. Still, it seemed very odd that there should be a general impression of Anne's early attachment to Major Harper, in contradistinction to the old Squire's regretful hint that she had refused his eldest son. But these scraps of romance, so far back in the past, were useless searching.

"An excellent woman is Anne Valery," continued Harrie--"really excellent: but sometimes rather a bore to her friends who have families. My Duke often forgets he has four children to provide for, when he listens to her charitable schemes. 'Twas but the other day he and she were mad about some starving Cornish miners that she sent poor Mr. Wilson to look after."

"Ah, I remember," cried Agatha, now interested in things which she had before heard indifferently. She was thirsting for some opportunity of doing good--of redeeming the long waste of idle years and unemployed fortune. "Do tell me about those miners."

"Little to tell, my dear. Only philanthropic ideas about helping poor wretches that had been thrown out of work by some cheating speculators shutting up the mines. Anne sent Wilson to find out who the man was, and what could be done. After that I never heard any more of it, nor did my husband either.--Stop--don't run and question him! For goodness' sake let the nonsense drop out of his poor dear head."

Agatha, thus rebuffed, ceased her inquiries, but she inwardly resolved to find out all about the Cornish miners, and consult with her husband about assisting them. He could not object to this good deed--it should be done as privately as ever he liked--she would take care not even to make mention of it before anybody, as in the matter of the subscription. And surely, though he was strange and had his peculiar notions, Nathanael was generous at heart, and would not thwart her in anything really essential, especially when she only wished to follow in the steps of Anne Valery, and use worthily her large fortune.

With these thoughts elevating and cheering her mind, she sat and watched for her husband until he came. She was so glad to see him that she quite forgot to inquire about the house. He seemed at first expectant of her questions, and rather grave, but at last gave himself up to the general merry mood.

Once only, when they were riding homeward side by side, the fading sunset before them, and the low moon hiding herself behind the great black hill of Corfe, Nathanael suddenly said:

"My dear Agatha, perhaps you would like me to tell you"--

"No," she cried, with a quick instinct of reluctance. "Tell me nothing to-night. Let us be happy for this one day."

Her husband sighed, and was silent. _

Read next: Chapter 17

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