"Say on."

"I have given up--as Agatha wrote you word--all idea of our settling at Montreal. It is necessary that I should at once find some employment in England."

"Not yet--not just yet," said his wife.

"I must, dear. It is right--it is necessary. Anne herself would say so."

Miss Valery a.s.sented, much to Agatha's surprise.

"The only question then is--what can I do? Nothing in the professions--for I have acquired none; nothing in literature--for I am not a genius; but anything in the clear, straightforward, man-of-business line--Uncle Brian used to accuse me of being so very practical.--Anne," he added, smiling, "I wish, instead of having to puff off myself thus, Uncle Brian were here to advertise my qualifications."

"Qualifications for what?" inquired Agatha, Miss Valery being silent

"For obtaining from my friend here what I would at once have applied for to any stranger; poor Wilson's vacant post as her overseer, land-agent, steward, or whatever the name may be."

"Steward!" cried Mrs. Harper. "Surely you would never dream of being a steward?"

"Why not? Because I am unworthy of the situation, or--as I fear my proud little wife thinks--because the situation is not worthy of me? Nay, a man never loses honour by earning his bread in honourable fashion; and Miss Valery herself said that for this office she required both a gentleman and a friend. Will she accept me?"

And he extended, proudly as his father might--yet with a frank independence n.o.bler than the pride of all the Harpers--his honest right hand. Anne Valery took it, the tears rising in her eyes.

"I could never have offered you this, Nathanael; but since you are so steadfast, so wise----Yes! it is indeed, considering all things, the wisest course you can pursue. Only, I will agree to nothing unless your wife consents."

"I will not consent," said Agatha, determinedly.

There was an uncomfortable pause.

"I see in your plan no reason--no right," continued she, forgetting in her annoyance even the outward deference with which her sense of conjugal dignity led her invariably to treat her husband. "Why was I never told this before?"

"Because I never thought of it myself until this morning."

The exceeding gentleness of his tone surprised her, and restrained many more words, not over-sweet, which were issuing from her angry lips.

"The fact is, Agatha--I may speak before Anne Valery whom we both love"--

"And who loves you both as if you had been her own kindred."

These words, so tremulously said, swept away a little bitterness that was rising up in Agatha's heart against Miss Valery.

"It is necessary," Mr. Harper went on--"imperatively so, for my comfort--that I should at once do something. And in choosing one's work, it always seemed to me there was great wisdom in the rule--'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.' Many things I could not do; this I can, well and faithfully, as Anne will find. Nor need I feel ashamed of being steward to Miss Valery."

Agatha felt her spirit of opposition quaking on its throne. "But your father--your sisters. What will they all say at Kingcombe Holm?"

"Nothing that I cannot combat. My father will be glad of our settling near him in Dorsetshire."

"In Dorsetshire!" echoed Mrs. Harper dolefully; and thereupon fled her last visions of a gay London home. Yet she already liked her husband's county and people well enough to bear the sacrifice with tolerable equanimity.

"And whatever he says, whatever any one else says, I have no fear, if my wife will only stand by me, and trust that I do everything for the best."

His wife listened, not without agitation, for she remembered their first dispute, only a few days ago. Here was rising another storm. Yet either she felt weaker to contend, or something in Nathanael's manner lured her to believe him in the right. She listened--only half-convinced, yet still she listened.

Anne Valery did the same, though she took no part in the argument Only continually her eyes wandered to Nathanael, less with smiling heart-warm affection than with the pensive tenderness with which one watches a dead likeness revived in a living face.

At last, when he had expressed all he could--everything except entreaty or complaint--Mr. Harper paused. "Now, Agatha, speak."

She felt that she must yield, yet tried to struggle a little longer. She had been so unused to control.

"You should have consulted with me--have explained more of your reasons, which as yet I do not comprehend. Why should you be so wondrously anxious to begin work? It is unreasonable, unkind."

"Am I unkind to you, my poor Agatha?" His accent was that of unutterable pain.

"No! no! that you never are! Only--I suppose because I am young and lately married--I do not half understand you. What must I do, Miss Valery?"

Anne looked from one to the other--Nathanael, who, as was his habit in all moments of great trial, a.s.sumed an aspect unnaturally hard--and Agatha whose young fierce spirit was just bursting out, wrathful, yet half repentant all the while. "What must you do? You must try to learn the lesson that every woman has to learn from and for the man she loves--to have faith in him."

"We women," she continued softly, "the very best and wisest of us, cannot enter thoroughly into the nature of the man we love. We can only love him. That is, when we once believe him worthy of affection. Firmly knowing that, we must bear with all the rest; and where we do not quite understand, we must, as I said, _have faith in him_. I have heard of some women whose faith has lasted all their life."

Anne's serious smile, and the beautiful steadfastness of her eyes, which vaguely turned seaward--though apparently looking at nothing--made a deep impression on the young wife.

She answered, thoughtfully, "I believe in my husband too, otherwise I would not have married him. Therefore, since our two wills seem to clash, and he is the older and the wiser--let him decide as he thinks best--I will try to 'have faith in him.'"

Nathanael grasped her hand, but did not speak--it seemed impossible to him. Soon after, they all rose and turned homeward, leaving the breezy terrace and the bright sunshiny sea. None turned to look back at either, excepting only--for one lingering, parting glance--Anne Valery.

CHAPTER XIV.

The same afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Harper and Miss Valery drove to Kingcombe, to see if in that quaint little town there was a house suitable for the young couple. They had not said a word to either of the Miss Harpers concerning this sudden arrangement, agreeing that the father of the household ought to be shown the respect of receiving the first information.

"And then," said Nathanael, "I trust mainly to Anne Valery to overcome his scruples. Anne can do anything she likes with my father. Don't you remember," he continued, leaning over to the front seat where the two ladies were, and looking quite cheerful, as though a great load had been taken off his mind--"don't you remember--I do, though I was such a little boy--how there was one day a grand family tumult because Frederick wanted his commission, and my father refused it--how you walked up and down the garden, first with one and then with the other, persuading everybody to be friends, while Uncle Brian and I"--

"There, that will do," said Miss Valery. "Never mind old times, but let us look forward to the future. Here we are at Kingcombe. Agatha, how do you like the place?"

And Agatha, on this glowing autumn afternoon, eagerly examined her future home.

It was a rather noteworthy country town; small, clean, with an air of sober preservation, reminding one of a well-kept, dignified, healthy old age. It wore its antiquity with a sort of pride, as if its quaint streets, intersecting one another in cruciform shape, still kept the impress of mediaeval feet, baron's or priest's, in the days when Kingcombe had sixteen churches and a castle to boot--as if the Roman walls which enclosed it lay solemnly conscious that, at night, ghosts of old Latin warriors glided over the smooth turf of those great earthen mounds where the town's-children played. Even the very river, which came up to the town narrow and slow, with perhaps one sailing-barge on it visible far across the flat country, and looking like a boat taking an insane pedestrian excursion over the meadows--even the river seemed to run silently, as if remembering the time when it had floated up Danish ships with their fierce barbarian freight, and landed them just under that red sand-cliff, where the lazy cows now stood, and the innocent blackberry-bushes grew.

It was a curious place Kingcombe, or so Agatha thought.

"How strange it is," Mr. Harper observed. "All these old spots seem to me like places beheld in a dream. Uncle Brian often used to talk about them. I think to this day he remembers everything and everybody about Kingcombe."

"Does he?"

"And that some day or other he will come back again I do most firmly believe. Do not you, Anne?"

"Yes." As she spoke, her hand involuntarily was pressed upon her side.

Agatha wondered she responded so coldly and with so melancholy a look, to such a joyous prospect as Uncle Brian's return would surely be to all the family.