her own for him--only that was a different sort of feeling. She
thought less on this than on the other side of the subject--how sweet it
was to be so dear to him. She would try and deserve him more--be to him
a faithful wife and a good house-wife, and make herself happy in his
devotion.

She smiled as she passed through the hall where he had stood and said,
"Do you love me?" She wished she had frankly answered "Yes," as was
indeed the truth; only his strong love had lately made her own seem so
poor and weak.

Lingering on the spot which his feet had last pressed, she tried to
fancy him beside her, and acted the scene over again, "making believe,"
childish fashion, that she stood on tiptoe attempting to reach up to
his mouth--a very long way!--and there breathing out the "Yes" in a
perfectly justifiable and unquestionable fashion. And then she laughed
at her own conceit--the foolish little wife!--and tripped off into the
drawing-room, lest the old butler, who always went round the house at
midnight to see that all was safe, might catch her at her antics.
Still, were they not quite natural? Was she not a very happy and
fondly-worshipped wife? and was not her husband coming home the next
morning?

Entering the drawing-room, her high spirits were somewhat sobered
down; its atmosphere felt so gloomy and cold. The fire had nearly died
out--the ill-natured fire, that did not know there was a cheerful little
woman coming to sit beside it and dream of all sorts of pleasant things.

"I wish fires would never go out," said Agatha, rather crossly; and
she stirred it, and blew it, and cherished it, as if it were the only
pleasant companion in this dreary room.

"How I do love fire," she said at last, as she sat down on the
hearth-rug and warmed her little feet and hands by the blaze, and would
not look in the dark corners of the room, but kept her face turned from
them, as during her life she had kept it turned away from all gloomy
subjects. Passionate anguish of her own making, she had known; but that
stern, irremediable sorrow which comes direct from the unseen Mover of
all things and lays its heavy hand on the sufferer's head, saying, "Be
still, and know that I am God"--this teaching, which must come to every
human soul that is worth its destiny, had never yet come to Agatha
Harper.

Was it this unknown something even now tracking her, that made her long
for the familiar daylight, and feel afraid of night, with its silenc