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