n singing his good-night before the
sun went down.

Agatha could have been happy, merry--she was still so young, and
the weight on her heart was the first that ever had fallen there. At
intervals she struggled to forget it--almost succeeded; and then the
first glimpse of her husband's face, the first tone of his voice,
brought the burden back again. Her spirits grew wilder than ever, lest
any one should guess she was so very, very miserable.

After dinner, dreading Anne's eyes, she rushed off into the garden with
Harrie Dugdale; tossing back her hair, and inhaling by gasps the cold
evening wind, that it might bring calm and clearness to her brain. Even
yet she felt as though she were dreaming.

Returning, she found lights in the drawing-room. Mr. Trenchard, in a
patient attitude, was listening to Marmaduke Dugdale; some distance
off, Nathanael sat talking to Miss Valery. Anne was leaning back in an
arm-chair: the lamp shining full on her face showed how very pale and
worn it was. Her voice, too, sounded feeble, as Agatha caught the words:

"In two months, you think? That is a long time."

"It cannot be sooner, Marmaduke says. I met him on board the ship
at Weymouth; when he told me of this innocent little scheme he was
transacting."

"But you will not tell"--

"Uncle Brian? No, of course not. Yet I think it would do Uncle Brian
good to know how dearly Marmaduke and all his friends here care for him.
Yet he might not believe it--I think he never did."

Anne was silent.

"He used to say," continued Nathanael, who was sitting where he
could not see his wife, and for once heard not her soft step over the
carpet--"Uncle Brian used to say, that it was wisest neither to love
nor need love. I think different. It is a cruel, hardening, embittering
thing for a man to feel that no one loves him."

--"Love--love! Have you two sage ones been discussing that folly? Now,
may I have the honour to hear?"

"If Anne will talk; I have done speaking," said Mr. Harper, as he gave
Agatha his chair, and slowly moved away to the other circle.

Thus, ever thus, he went from her, escaping the chance of either being
wounded or healed. Agatha was nearly wild. With all her might she flung
herself into conversation with Mr. Trenchard, and tried to conjugate
that verb--hitherto a mystery to her innocent mind--_to flirt_. She
wished to make herself beautifully hateful--bewitchingly foul; or rather
she did not care what she made herself,