, as dumb as a stone. But I will make you hear--I will
shriek it into your silence again--again--You married me for my money!"

Still no word. The silence she spoke of was awful. Nathanael stood
upright, his hands knotted together, the lids dropping over his eyes.
He neither looked at her nor at anything. There was not the slightest
expression in his face--it might have been carved in granite. When at
last almost to see if he were living man, Agatha clutched his arm, it
also felt hard, immoveable, like a granite rock.

"Mr. Harper!" she cried, terror mingling with the outburst of her rage.

He merely lifted his eyes and looked at the door.--Not once--oh! never
once at her!

"Ay, I will go," she answered--"most gladly, most thankfully! I will run
anywhere to escape your presence."

She crossed the room and tried to unfasten the door, which she had
herself bolted a little while before, out of play; but her trembling
fingers were useless. She was obliged to call her husband's help, and he
came.

Perfectly silent, without a single glance towards her, he undid the
fastening, and set the door open for her to pass. A pang of fear, nay
remorse, came over Agatha.

"Speak," she cried--"if only one word, speak!"

His lips moved, as though framing an inarticulate "No," and then closed
again in that iron line. He still stood holding the door.

Hardly knowing what she did, Agatha sprang past the threshold and
tottered a few steps on. Then turning, she saw the door shut behind her,
slowly, noiselessly, but _it was shut_. She felt as if the door of hope
had been shut upon her heart.

She turned again, and fled away.

CHAPTER XVIII.

It was late afternoon. The rain had ceased, and glowed into one of those
soft October days, so exquisitely sunny and fair. The light glimmered
through the closed Venetian blinds of "Anne's room," and danced on the
carpet and about Agatha's feet as she sat, quiet at last, and tried to
remember how she had come and how long she had been there. She had seen
no one; nobody ever came into "Anne's room."

The dressing-bell rang--the only sound she had heard in the house for
hours.

She started up, waking to the frightful certainty that all was
real--that the ways of the household were going on just as usual--that
she must rouse up, no matter staggering under what burden of misery, and
go through her daily part, as if nothing had happened, and nothing was
about to happen.

Nothing? when t