!

There in truth she was, in her usual seat, wearing her ordinary dress.
She had taken off the invalid-cap, and her soft hair was arranged as
carefully as if no white lines marred its brownness. She looked less
old than usual--nay, almost beautiful--so exquisitely peaceful was the
expression of her countenance.

Nathanael and his wife hung back, letting Mr. Harper meet her first.

She rose and held out both hands to him. "Welcome home again--welcome
home!"

He said nothing, but grasped the hands, and retained them fast. There
was a long, long look, eye to eye, face to face,--a look, in which
were gathered and summed up all the years since they were young,
together,--and then the two old friends sat down side by side. Agatha
thought it strange that they should meet in such a calm, commonplace
way--but then she was young. She did not know how quietly flows
the outward surface of a tide that has flowed on, deep, solemn, and
changeless, for five-and-twenty years.

In a little while they were all sitting round the fire--the merry
Christmas fire with its blazing pine-log--talking just as naturally and
familiarly as though no emotion had stirred them. Anne Valery, resting
in her arm-chair, looked on and smiled. She talked little, but listened
to the rest, and by an inexplicable sweet calmness, made them all so
much at ease, that it seemed to Agatha as if they four had known one
another for a whole lifetime, and been always as happy as now.

As the evening advanced, the Christmas dinner was announced.

"I am sorry I cannot sit at the head of my own table to-day, but"--and
Miss Valery gently laid her hand on Brian's arm--"you will take my
place, old friend?"

He made some unintelligible answer, and they all left the drawing-room.
It was a rather silent dinner; yet, somehow, no one looked sad. No one
could, with Anne's cheerful influence pervading the whole house.

Agatha soon rose and rejoined her. She was sitting just as they had left
her--but whether it was through the light being dimmer, or through a
certain thoughtfulness in her face, Agatha thought she did not look
quite the same.

"Are you well?" Are you sure you are not tired? And"--here Agatha
ventured to wrap her arms round her and gaze up in her eyes with a
fulness of meaning--are you happy?"

"Ay, happy! perfectly happy!" The look and tone were such as Agatha
never forgot. They expressed a bliss that of its intensity could not
necessarily endure for mor