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
