"Oh, Agatha, forgive me!--Have patience with me, and we may still be happy; at least, you may. Only trust your husband, and love him a little--a very little--as much as you can."

"How can I trust you, whom I do not thoroughly understand? how can I--love"--

Her hesitation--her pride warring with the expression of that feeling which her very anger taught her was there--seemed to pierce her husband to the soul.

"I see," he said, mournfully. "We are both punished, Agatha; I for the selfishness of my love towards you, and you--Alas! how can I make you happier, poor child?" Her tears fell still, but less with anger than emotion. "I know now, we ought never to have been married. Yet, since we are married"--

"Ay, since we are married, let us try to be good to one another, and bear with one another. I will!"

She kissed his hand, which held up her drooping head, and Nathanael pressed his lips on her forehead. So outward peace was made between them; but in sadness and in fear, like a compact sealed tremblingly over a newly-closed grave.

CHAPTER XII.

"And this is Dorsetshire! What a sharp bleak wind!" said Agatha, shivering.

Her husband, who was driving her in a phaeton which had met them at the railway station, turned to wrap a cloak round her.

"Except in the height of summer it is always cold across these moors.

But we shall soon be safe at Kingcombe Holm. Are you very tired?"

She answered "No," which was hardly the truth. Yet her heart was more weary than her limbs.

During the few days that elapsed between Major Harper's visit and their quitting London, she had scarcely seen her husband. He had been out continually, coming home to dinner tired and exhausted, though afterwards he always tried to talk and be cheerful. To her surprise, Major Harper never again called, nor, except in the brief answer to her question, "that Frederick was gone from home," did Nathanael ever mention his brother's name.

"This is Kingcombe," said Mr. Harper, as they drove through a little town, which Agatha, half blinded by the wind, scarcely opened her eyes to look at. "My sister, Mrs. Dugdale, lives here. I thought they might have met us at the station; but the Dugdales are always late. Ah, there he is!"

"Who?"

"My brother-in-law, Marmaduke Dugdale--or 'Duke Dugdale,' as everybody about here calls him. Holloa, Duke!"

And Agatha, through her blue veil, "was ware," as old chronicles say, of a country-looking gentleman coming down the street in a mild, lazy, dreamy fashion, his hat pushed up at a considerable elevation from his forehead, leaving a ma.s.s of light hair straggling out at the back, his eyes bent thoughtfully on the pavement, and his hands crossed behind him.

"Holloa, Duke!" cried Nathanael, for the second time, before he caught the attention of this very abstracted personage.

"Eh--is it you? You don't say so! E--h!"

Agatha was amused by the long, sweet-sounding drawl of the last monosyllable, which seemed formed out of all the five vowels rolled into one. It was said in such a pleasant voice, with such a simple, child-like air of delighted astonishment, that Agatha, conquering her shyness at this first meeting with one of her husband's family, peeped behind Nathanael's shoulder at Mr. Dugdale.

She saw--what to her keen sense of beauty was a considerable shock--the very plainest man she thought she had ever beheld!

"Mr. Dugdale--my wife."

"Indeed! Very glad to see her." And Agatha who was intending merely to bow, felt her hand buried in another thrice its size, which gave it a shy, gentle, but thoroughly cordial shake. "And really, now I think of it, I was coming to meet you. The Missus told me to do it."

"How is 'the Missus?'" asked Mr. Harper.

"Quite well--they're all waiting for you. So make haste--the Squire is very particular as to time, you know!"

Nodding to them both with a smile which diffused such an extraordinary light over the uncomely face that Agatha was quite startled and began to reconsider her first impression regarding it,--"Duke" Dugdale turned to walk on; but just as the horse was starting, came back again.

"Nathanael, you are here just in time--general election coming. You're a Free-trader of course?"

"Why, I never thought much about the matter."

"Eh!--What a pity! But we'll convert you, and you shall convert your father. Ah, yes--I think we'll get the Squire on our side at last Good-bye."

"Who is 'the Missus' and who is 'the Squire'" asked Agatha, as they drove off.

"'The Missus' is his wife--my sister Harriet, and 'the Squire' is my father," said Nathanael, smiling. His face had worn a pleasant look ever since he caught sight of Duke Dugdale's. "When I first came home I was as much amused as yourself at these queer Dorsetshire phrases, but I like them now; they are so simple and patriarchal."

Agatha agreed; yet she could hardly help laughing. But though this brother-in-law of Mr. Harper's--and she suddenly remembered that he was her own brother-in-law too--used provincial words, and spoke with a slight accent, which she concluded was "Dorset,"--though his dress and appearance had an anti-Stultzified, innocent, country look, still there was something about Marmaduke Dugdale which bespoke him unmistakably the gentleman.

"I am glad we met him," said Mr. Harper, looking back down the street.

"There he is, talking to a knot of people at the market-hall--farmers, no doubt, whom he will try to make Free-traders of, and who would listen to him affectionately, even if he tried to make them Mahometans. The good soul! There isn't a better man in all Dorsetshire."

It was evident that Nathanael greatly liked "Duke Dugdale."

Agatha would have asked a score of questions; about his age, which defied all guessing, and might have been anything from thirty to fifty-five--also about his "Missus," for he looked like a man who never could have made love, or thought of such a thing, in all his life. But her curiosity was restrained, partly by that of the old servant behind, who kept up a close though reverential observance of all the sayings and doings of "Ma-a-ester" Nathanael's wife. She did not like even accidentally to betray how very little of Kingcombe her reserved husband had told her, and how she knew scarcely more of his family than their names.

Having parted from his brother-in-law, and gradually lost the benign influence which Duke Dugdale seemed to impart, Mr. Harper's face re-a.s.sumed that gravity, almost sadness, which, except when talking with herself, his wife now continually saw it wear.

They drove on, pushing against a fierce wind, that appeared like an invisible iron barrier to intercept their way. Every now and then, Agatha could not help shivering and creeping closer to her husband; whenever she did so, he always turned round and wrapped her up with most sedulous care.

"It is a dreary day for you to see our county for the first time, Agatha. If the sun were shining, these wide bleak sweeps of country would look all purple with heather, and that dun-coloured, gloomy range of hills;--we must call them hills out of compliment, though they are so small--would stand out in a clear line against the sky. Beyond them lies the British Channel, with its grand sea-coast."

"The sea--ah! always the sea."

"Nay, dear, don't be afraid, how don't'ee--as we Dorset people would say. Kingcombe Holm lies in a valley. You would never know you were so near the ocean. It is the same at Anne Valery's house."

"Where is that!" said Agatha, brightening up at the mention of the name.

"Why, this animal seems inclined to show me--even if I did not know it of long habit," answered Mr. Harper, bestowing a little less of his attention on his wife, and more on the obstreporous pony, who, in regard to a certain turn of the road, had grown peculiarly wrong-headed.

"Don't'ee give in, sir! T'Squire bought he o' Miss Valery, and she do gi' un their own way, terrible bad," hinted the groom.

"Unfortunately, his own way happens to be a wrong one," said Nathannael, quietly, as he drew the reins tighter, and set himself to do that which it takes a very firm man to do to conquer an obstinate and unruly horse.

Agatha remembered what she had heard or read somewhere about such a case being no bad criterion of a man's character, "lose your temper, and you'll lose your beast," ay, and perhaps your own life into the bargain.

She was considerably frightened, but she sat quite still, looking from the struggling animal to her husband, in whose fair face the colour had risen, while the boyish lips were set together with a will, fierce, rigid, and man-like. She could hardly take her eyes from him.

"Agatha, are you afraid? Will you descend?" asked he, suddenly.

"No--I will stay with you."

The struggle between man and brute lasted a minute or two longer, at the end of which, all danger being over, they were speeding on rapidly to Kingcombe Holm. Agatha sat very thoughtful.

"I fear," she said--when he tried to draw her out of her contemplative mood, showing her the wild furzy slopes and the fir-trees, almost the only trees that grow in this region--standing in black clumps on the hill-tops, like sentinel-ghosts of the old Romans, who used to encamp there--"I fear you have made _me_ as much in awe of you as you have the pony."