, and said something about my being such a young girl, so gay-hearted and pretty—(bah!—though I was pretty then)—too young, he said, to marry such an elderly man, etc. etc. etc."
"And what did you say?"
"Likewise nothing. I just jumped on his knee, and took him round the neck, and—But that isn't of the slightest consequence to anybody. Tuts! On with you, Dunce!" And Harrie leaned forward, her eyelashes glittering wet in spite of her fun.
"I know I don't deserve him," she continued. "I never did. Nobody could. There are a lot of bad men in the world, but when a man is really good, there's hardly a woman alive that is good enough for him. And I'm not half good enough for Duke—but—I love him! That's all. Bless thee, Brian! thee is Pa's own boy all over!"
And Harrie kissed the little fellow passionately, with something more even than a mother's love.—Agatha could have lifted up her arms and shrieked with misery.
It was a strange long day at Kingcombe Holm; many things to be arranged, many questions to be parried, many prying eyes to be avoided. But the general conclusion seemed to be, that this sudden movement was a mysterious whim of Nathanael—and Nathanael was supposed by one-half of his family to be mightily prone to mysteries and whims.
At length, when the day was nigh spent, and Agatha had dressed for the last of those formal dinners to which she had never been able quite to reconcile herself, she took refuge in Elizabeth's room. Thither she had of late absented herself; there was something so formidable in the keenness of Elizabeth's silent eyes. Hesitating before the door, she remembered when she had last quitted it. It required all her bravery to cross the threshold once more.
"Come in. I hear your foot, Agatha." There was no stepping back now.
The same atmosphere of peace and sanctity pervading the pretty room; the same lights dancing through the painted window on the silk coverlet; the same face, which had all the colourless reality of death, without any of its ghastliness—a smiling repose, such as is seen only at the beginning and end of life's tumult—in the cradle and in the coffin. Its effect upon Agatha was instantaneous. Her trembling ceased; she stepped lightly, as one does in entering a holy place.
"Elizabeth!