s
closely--"Agatha, would you be very unhappy if we went back and lived,
poor, in the little cottage?"

"Unhappy? I?"

"I would try that you should not be. I can earn quite enough to give
you many comforts. We should not be any more content if we claimed our
rights and lived in prosperity at Kingcombe Holm."

"Oh, no!"

"Besides, I am not sure that these are our rights, morally speaking. I
think, if my father had lived long enough, he would have undone what he
did in a moment of passion, and let the first will stand. This is what I
have said to myself, when considering that I have duties towards my wife
as well as towards others, and that this would restore what was taken
from her. 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' But, Agatha, we
would not urge that law?"

"Never! God forbid! And Major Harper was so kind to me when I was an
orphan."

"_Only_ kind? Did he never--No, I am getting foolish. Say on, Agatha.
Come, sit here; we can talk, and nobody can see or hear us." And he led
his wife to a sheltered arbutus-bower. "Well, was my brother so kind to
you?"

"He was, indeed. For the sake of that time I would forgive him anything;
I have already forgiven him a good deal."

"Indeed? Tell me or not, as you choose; I urge no right to pry into your
secrets."

"Oh, don't look, don't speak in that way! Why should I not tell you?
I would have told you before, had you asked. It was nothing--indeed
nothing. But I was a proud girl, and he made me angry with him."

"For what cause?"

She grew confused--hesitated; the shamefacedness of girlhood came over
her. "I will tell you," she said at last boldly. "It is surely no
harm to tell anything to my husband:--Major Harper once said to Emma
Thornycroft, that he thought I was 'in love' with him."

"Well!"

"It was cruel, it was wicked, it insulted my pride. And more than
that--it wounded me to the heart that _he_ should say so."

"Was it--don't speak if you don't like--was it _true_?"

"No," cried Agatha, the blood rushing in a torrent over her face. "No,
it was not true. I liked, I admired him, in a free girlish way; but I
never, never loved him."

There was a minute's hush in the arbutus-bower, and then Nathanael sank
down to his wife's side--down, lower yet, to her very feet. He wrapped
his arms round her waist, laying his head in her lap. His whole frame
shook convulsively.

"Oh Heaven! You surely did not think _that?_" cried Agatha, appalled.

"I did, ever