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
instin