He smiled, and was quoting something about "love casting out fear," when he suddenly corrected himself, and grew silent. In that silence they swept on to the gates of Kingcombe Holm.

It was a place--more like an ancient manorial farm than a gentleman's residence--nestled snugly in one of those fairy valleys which are found here and there among the bleak wastes of Dorsetshire coast scenery--the richer for the barrenness of all around. Before and behind the house rose sudden acclivities, thick with autumn-tinted trees. On another side was a smooth, curving, wavy hill, bare in outline, with white dots of grazing sheep floating about upon its green. The Holm, with its garden and park, lay on a narrow plain of verdurous beauty, at the bottom of the valley. Nothing was visible beyond it, save a long, bare, terraced range of hill, and the sky above all. There was no other habitation in sight, except a tiny church, planted on one acclivity, and two or three labourers' cottages, in the doors of which a few rolypoly, open-eyed children stood, poking their fingers in their mouths, and staring intensely at Agatha.

"Oh, what a delicious nest," she cried--overcome with excitement at her first view of Kingcombe Holm, where, however, there was not a creature visible but the great dog, that barked a furious welcome from the courtyard, and the peac.o.c.k, that strutted to and fro before the blank windows, sweeping his draggled tail. "Are they at home, I wonder? Will they all be waiting for us?"

"In the drawing-room, most likely. It is my father's way. He receives there all strangers--new-comers, I mean. We shall see n.o.body till then."

"Don't be too sure of that, brother Nathanael," said a quick, lively voice. "So, ho! Dunce, hold still, do'ee! You used to be as precise as the Squire himself, bless his heart! Now then, N. L. Jump down!"

The speaker of all this had come flying out of the hall-door--a vision of flounces, gaiety, and heartiness, had given the pony a few pats, or rather slaps, _en pa.s.sant_, and now stood balancing herself on one of the spokes of the wheel, and leaning over into the carriage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Arrival at Kingcombe Holm p148]

"Is that you, Harrie? Agatha, this is my sister Mrs. Dugdale."

And Agatha found herself face to face (literally speaking, too, for "Harrie" kissed her) with a merry-looking, pretty woman, of a style a little too _p.r.o.noncee_ perhaps, for her features were on a similar mould to Major Harper's. Still, there could be no doubt as to the prettiness, and the airy, youthful aspect--younger, perhaps, than her years. Agatha was perfectly astounded to find in this gay "Harrie" the wife of the grave and middle-aged Duke Dugdale!

"You see, my dear--ahem! what shall I call you?--that I can't be formal and polite, and it's no use trying. So I just left my father sitting stately in the drawing-room with Mary on one side, as mistress of the household; Eulalie on the other, looking as bewitching and effective as she can, and both dying with curiosity to run out and see you. But I'm not a Miss Harper now; so, while they longed to do it, I--did it. Here I am! Welcome home, Mrs. Locke Harper!"

"Thank you," stammered the young bride, hardly knowing whether to laugh or to cry. Her husband was scarcely less agitated than herself, but showed it only in the nervous trembling of his upper lip, and in the extreme brevity of his words. He lifted his wife down from the carriage, and Mrs. Dugdale, throwing back the blue veil, peered curiously into the face of her new sister.

"E--h!" she said, in that long musical e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n just like her husband--the only thing in which she was like him. Never was a pair who so fully exemplified the theory of matrimonial opposites. "E--h, Nathanael!" And her quick glance at her brother indicated undisguised admiration of "the p.a.w.nee-face."

He himself looked restless, uncomfortable, as if his sister slightly fidgeted him; she had indeed, with all her heartiness, a certain quicksilverishness of manner, jumping here, there, and everywhere like mercury on a plate, in a fashion that was very perplexing at first to quiet people.

"Come along, my dear," continued Harrie, tucking the young wife under her arm--"come and beautify a little--the Squire likes it. And run away to your father, N. L., my boy!" added she to her younger brother--younger--as a closer inspection of her fresh country face showed--possibly by some five or six years.

Mr. Harper a.s.sented with as good a grace as he could, and resigned his wife to his sister.

For the next ten minutes Agatha had a confused notion of being taken through many rooms and pa.s.sages, hovered about by Mrs. Dugdale, her flounces, and her lively talk--of trying to answer a dozen questions per minute, and being so bewildered, that she succeeded in answering none, save that she had met Mr. Dugdale--that she did _not_ think him "a beauty," and (she hastily and in terror added this fact) that there was not the least necessity for his being so.

"Not the least, my dear. I always thought the same! You'll love him heartily in a week--I did! Bless him for a dear, good, ugly, beautiful old soul!"

Here Agatha, who stood listening, and nervously arranging the long curls that _would_ fall uncurled and untidy, felt a renewal of her old girlish enthusiasm for all true things; her eyes brightened, and her heart warmed towards "Harrie." She would have liked to stay talking longer, but for a vision of Mr. Harper waiting uncomfortably down-stairs.

"So you have finished adorning, and want to go! You can't bear to be ten minutes away from your husband, that's clear! Well, my dear, you'll get wiser when you have been married as long as I have. But I don't know,"

added Mrs. Dugdale laughing; "I'm always glad enough to get rid of Duke for an hour or two; yet somehow, when he is away, I'm always wanting him. By-the-by, did he happen to say what time he was coming over here--only to see you, you know? He has quite enough of 'the Missus.'"

Agatha laughingly asked how long "the Missus" had borne that t.i.tle.

"Couldn't possibly count! Look at Gus and Fred in jacket and trousers, and little Brian learning to ride. Frightful antiquity! And yet when I married I was a girl like you; only ten times wilder--the greatest harum-scarum in the county! I often wonder poor Duke was not afraid to marry me! Heigho! Well, here we are down-stairs, and here--take your wife, most solemn brother Nathanael! If you were but a little more like Frederick! By the way, have you seen Fred lately?"

"He has left town," said Mr. Harper, shortly, as he drew his young wife's arm through his own, and led her to his father's presence.

Agatha was conscious of a tall, thin, white-haired gentleman--not unlike Major Harper frozen into stately age--who rose and came to meet her.

"I am most happy to welcome my son's wife to Kingcombe Holm."

Agatha felt the withered fingers touching her own--the kiss of welcome formally sealed on her forehead. She trembled exceedingly for a moment, but recovered herself, and met old Mr. Harper's keen observant gaze with one as clear and as composed as his own. One glance told her that he was not the sort of man into whose fatherly arms she could throw herself, and indulge the emotion br.i.m.m.i.n.g over in her heart. But his examination of her was evidently favourable.

"You are most welcome, believe me. And my daughters"--here he turned to two ladies, of whom Agatha at first distinguished nothing, save that one was very pretty, the other much older, and plain--"my daughters, receive your new sister." Here the ladies aforesaid approached and shook hands, the plain one very warmly.--"You also can tell her how truly glad we are to receive--Mrs. Harper."

He hesitated a little before the latter word, and p.r.o.nounced it with some tremulousness, as though the old man were thinking how many years had pa.s.sed since the name "Mrs. Harper" had been unspoken at Kingcombe Holm.

His daughters looked at one another--even Harriet observing a grave respect No one spoke, or took outward notice of the circ.u.mstance; but from that time the subject of much secret conjecture was set at rest, and Agatha was called by every one "Mrs. Harper."

During the somewhat awkward quarter of an hour that followed, in which the chief conversation was sustained by "the Squire," and occasionally by Nathanael--Mrs. Dugdale having vanished--the young girl observed her two sisters-in-law. Neither struck her fancy particularly, perhaps because there was nothing particular to strike it. The Misses Harper were, like most female branches of "county families," vegetating on their estates from generation to generation in uninterrupted gentility and uniformity. Of the two, Agatha liked Mary best; for there was great goodnature shining through her fearless plainness--a sort of placid acknowledgment of the fact that she was born for usefulness, not ornament. Eulalie, on the contrary, carried in her every gesture a disagreeable self-consciousness, which testified to her long a.s.sumption of one character--the beauty of the family. Despite Agatha's admiration of handsome women in general, she and the youngest Miss Harper eyed one another uncomfortably, as if sure from the first that they shall never like one another.

All this while Nathanael spoke but little to his wife, apparently leaving her to nestle down at her own will among his family. But he kept continually near her, within reach of a word or glance, had she given him either; and she more than once felt his look of grave tenderness reading her very soul. She could not think why, in spite of all his efforts to the contrary, he should be continually so serious, while she was quite ready to be happy and at ease.

There was one thing, however, which gave her keen satisfaction--the great honour in which her husband was evidently held by his family.

Very soon a heterogeneous post-prandial repast was announced for the benefit of the travellers; to which Mr. Harper graciously bade them retire--even leading his daughter-in-law to the dining-room door.

"He'll not come further in," whispered Mrs. Dugdale, who made herself most active about Agatha. "You arrived at seven, and my father would as soon think of changing his six o'clock dinner hour as he would of changing his politics; for all Duke says to the contrary."

Agatha was not sorry, since the idea of dining under the elaborate kindness and dignified courtliness of old Mr. Harper was rather alarming. Besides, she was so hungry!

The moment her father-in-law had closed the door, the sisters came gathering like bees round herself and her husband, Mary busy over every possible physical want, Harrie, sitting at, or rather, on the table. She had a wild and not ungraceful way of throwing herself about--rattling on like a very Major Harper in petticoats, and flinging away _bon mots_ and witty sayings enough to make the fortune of many a "wonderfully clever woman,"--the very last character which this light-spirited country-lady would probably have imagined her own. For Eulalie, she had relaxed into a few words, and fewer smiles, the quality of neither being of sufficient value to make one regret the quant.i.ty. n.o.body minded her much but Mary, who was motherly, kind, and reverential always to the inane beauty.

Such were Agatha's first impressions of her new sisters. With a shyness not unnatural she had taken little notice of her husband. He had chatted among his sisters, with whom he seemed very popular: but always in the intervals of talk the pale, grave, tired look came over him.

In quitting the dining-room--where Agatha, irresistibly led on by Mrs.

Dugdale's pleasantness, had begun to feel quite at home, and had laughed till she was fairly tired out--he said, in a half whisper:

"Now, dear, I think we ought to go and see Elizabeth."

In the confusion of her arrival, Agatha had forgotten that there was another sister--in truth, the Miss Harper of the family--Mary, its head and housekeeper, being properly only "Miss Mary." She noticed that as Nathanael spoke, the other three looked at him and herself doubtfully, as if to inquire how much she knew--and anxiously, as though there were something painful and uncomfortable in a stranger's first seeing Elizabeth.

Mrs. Harper felt her cheeks tingle nervously, but still she put her arm in her husband's, and said, "I should much like to go."

Mary sent for lights, and prepared to accompany them herself, the other two moving away into the drawing-room.

Through the same sort of old-fashioned pa.s.sages, but, as it seemed, to quite a different part of the house, Agatha went with her husband and his sister. The strangeness and gloom of the place, the doubt as to what sort of person she was going to see--for all she had heard was that from some great physical suffering Elizabeth never quitted her room--made the young girl feel timid, even afraid. Her hand trembled so that her husband perceived it.

"Nay, you need not mind," he whispered. "You will see nothing to pain you. We all dearly love her, and I do believe she is very happy--poor Elizabeth!"

As he spoke Mary opened a door, and they pa.s.sed from the dark staircase into a large, well-lighted, pleasant room--made scrupulously pleasant, Agatha thought. It was filled with all sorts of pretty things, engravings, statuettes, vases, flowers, books, a piano; even the paper on the walls and the hangings at the window were of most delicate and careful choice. No rich drawing-room could show more taste in its arrangements, or have a more soothing effect on a mind to which the sense of aesthetic fitness is its native element.

At first, Agatha thought the room was empty, until, lying on a sofa--though so m.u.f.fled in draperies as nearly to disguise all form--she saw what seemed at first the figure of a child. But coming nearer, the face was no child's face. It was that of a woman, already arrived at middle age. Many wrinkles seamed it; and the hair surrounding it in soft, close bands, was quite grey. The only thing notable about the countenance was a remarkable serenity, which in youth might have conveyed that painful impression of premature age often seen in similar cases, but which now in age made it look young. It was as if time and worldly sorrow had alike forgotten this sad victim of Nature's unkindness--had pa.s.sed by and left her to keep something of the child's paradise about her still.

This face, and the small, thin, infantile-looking hands, crossed on the silk coverlet, were all that was visible. Agatha wondered she had so shrunk from the simple mystery now revealed.

Nathanael led her to the sofa, and placed her where Elizabeth could see her easily without turning round.

"Here is my wife! Is she like what you expected, sister?"

The head was raised, but with difficulty; and Agatha met the cheerful, smiling, loving eyes of her whom people called "poor Elizabeth." Such thorough content, such admiring pleasure, as that look testified! It took away all the painful constraint which most people experience on first coming into the presence of those whom Heaven has afflicted thus; and made Agatha feel that in putting such an angelic spirit into that poor distorted body, Heaven had not dealt hardly even with Elizabeth Harper.