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 Thorny-croft 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
