house--his lonely house; and for two days and nights, to the
astonishment and slight scandal of his sisters, he had been absent in
Cornwall. But wherever he was, or whatever he had to do, he either saw
or wrote to his wife every day; kind, grave words, or kinder letters;
brother-like in their wisdom and tenderness--just the sort of tenderness
that he seemed to believe she would wish for from him.

Agatha accepted all--these brief meetings--these constant letters; saw
the wounding curiosity of his sisters relax, and even Harriet Dugdale
acknowledged how mistaken had been her former notions, and on what
excellent terms her brother and his wife now evidently were; she really
never thought Nathanael would have made such an attentive, affectionate
husband! And Agatha smiled outwardly a proud satisfied smile; while
inwardly---oh, what a crushed, remorseful, passionate heart was there!

A heart which now began to know itself--at once its fulness and its
cravings. A heart thirsting for that love, wanting which, marriage is
but a dead corrupting body without the soul--love, the true life-union,
consisting of oneness of spirit, sympathy, thought, and will--love which
would have been the same had they lived twenty thousand miles apart, ay,
had they never married at all, but waited until eternity united those
whom no earthly destinies could altogether put asunder. Now out of her
own soul she learnt--what not one human being in a million learns,
and yet the truth remains the same--the unity, the immortality, the
divineness of Love, to which the One Immortal and Divine gave His own
name.

She sat in her usual quiet mood, she did everything in such a quiet,
self-contained fashion now--sat, idly talked to by Major Harper, whom
she did not hear at all. She only heard, at the further end of the
table, Nathanael talking to Mary. Sometimes she stole a glance, and
thought how cordial his manner to his sister was, and how tender his
eyes could look at times. And she sighed. At her sigh, her husband would
turn, see her listening to Frederick with that absent downcast look--and
become silent.

Not an angry jealous silence now--his whole manner showed how much he
honoured and trusted his wife--but the hush of a deep, abiding pain, a
sense of loss which nothing could ever reveal or remove.

But men must keep up worldly duties; it is only women, and not all of
these, who can afford the luxury of a broken heart. Mr. Harper rose,
nerved for th