hear him call Miss Valery a "girl"—she whom the young Agatha regarded as quite an elderly woman.
"And though he did leave us so abruptly—wherefore, remains to this day a mystery, unless it was a young man's whim and love of change—still I have the greatest dependence on Brian Harper," continued the Squire, who seemed as a parental right to monopolise all the talk at table.
"Brian Harper!" exclaimed Mr. Dugdale, waking from a trance. "Yes—Brian would surely be able to furnish those statistics on Canadian wheat. His judgment was always as sound as his politics."
"What was your remark, Marmaduke" said the old Squire, testily.
"O, nothing—nothing, father!" Harrie quickly answered, with a half merry, half warning frown at her lord. Mr. Dugdale folded himself up again into silence, with the quiet consciousness of one who has a pearl in his keeping—the undoubted value of which there is no need either to put forward or to defend.
Miss Valery here came to the rescue, and turned the conversation into a merry channel Agatha was surprised to find what a wondrous power of unfeigned home-cheerfulness there was in this woman, who had lived to be called even by those that loved her, "an old maid." And when at last the Squire gracefully allowed the departure of his women-kind, who floated away like a flock of released birds, they all clustered around Anne, as though she were in the constant habit of knowing everybody's business, and of thinking and judging for everybody.
Agatha sat a little way off, watching her, and wondering what could be the strange influence which always made her take delight in watching Anne Valery.
There is something very peculiar in this admiration which one woman occasionally conceives for another, generally much older than herself. It is not exactly friendship, but partakes more of the character of love—in its idealisation, its shyness, its enthusiastic reverence, its hopeless doubt of requital, and, above all, its jealousies. For this reason, it generally comes previous to, or for want of, the real love, the drawing of the feminine soul towards its masculine half, which makes—according to the Platonic doctrine—a perfect being. Of course, this theory would be almost universally considered "sentimentalism"—Agatha's little infatuation being included therein; but the frequency of such infatuations existing in the world around us argues some truth at their origin.
To the young girl—still so girlish, though she was married—there was an inexplicable attraction in all Anne Valery said or did. The