nd 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