And then, on the painful silence which sank over all four, smote ten heavy strokes of the hall-clock, warning the swift pa.s.sage of time--too swift to be wasted in struggle, regret, and contention. Anne rose, her pale face seeming to have that very thought written thereon.

"My dear friends, listen to me a minute. Here is one who all this time has not spoken a word, and yet the question concerns her more than any of us. Let Agatha decide."

The old man hesitated. Perhaps in his heart he was desirous of a compromise. Or else he judged from ordinary human nature, that the pride of the young wife would ally her on his side, and so win over a will which any father looking into Nathanael's face could see was not to be threatened into concession.

"_Pas aux dames,_" said Mr. Harper, with a pleasantly chivalric air.

Then more seriously: "My daughter-in-law, choose. But remember that you stand between your husband and his father."

Agatha, thrust into so new and important a position, felt a rush of temptations to follow her own impulse. She turned appealingly to Miss Valery, but Anne's eyes were fixed on the floor. She looked at her husband, and met a gaze of doubt, anxiety, mingled with a certain desperation.

"He knows my feeling about this matter; perhaps he thinks me a wilful child, ready to take advantage of the liberty given me. He is sure of what I shall say."

And she had half a mind to say it, as a condemnation for his so unkindly judging her; but the girlish pettishness and recklessness went away, and a better spirit came. She sat, her right hand nervously pushing backward and forward the still unfamiliar wedding-ring, until in accidentally feeling the symbol, she suddenly remembered the reality.

"I am a wife," she thought. "Under _all_ circ.u.mstances I will do a wife's duty." And with that determination all the pleasant little follies and temptations buzzing round her heart flew away, and left her--as one always is, having resolved to consider the right and nothing else--resolute and at ease.

She said very simply--almost childishly--taking her father-in-law's hand the while, "If you please, and if you would not be angry, I would rather do exactly as my husband likes. He knows best."

In these words she had exhausted all her boldness; and for a few minutes after had a very indistinct notion of everything, save that the Squire had walked off, not angrily, but in perfect silence, leaning on Miss Valery's arm, and that she was left in the dining-room alone with Nathanael.

CHAPTER XVI.

"So here is the result of family dinner-parties, and family-talks kept up till midnight!" said Mary Harper, with a little natural acerbity.

"It is provoking for the mistress of a precise household to sit waiting breakfast for a whole hour."

"Mary, be charitable! We did not know you were ready, and we were so busy in my room. No laziness, was it, Agatha?"

"No, indeed: I think Miss Valery is the very busiest woman I ever knew.

How can she get through it all?"

"Only by first making up my mind, and then acting upon it. Your husband's plan, too, I see. He and I shall get on as if we had worked together all our lives. Shall we not, my 'right-hand' Nathanael?"

He answered pleasantly; he looked quite a new man this morning. "Yes: I seem to understand your ways already. My first half-hour's business in the memorable 'Anne's room' at Kingcombe Holm has been like a return of old times. What a woman you are! You might have been brought up as I was by Uncle Brian. You have just his ways."

Anne smiled: and with a jest about the treble compliment he had contrived to pay, let the conversation slip past to other things.

Mary and Eulalie talked excessively. They were both much scandalised by their brother's new position and intended course of life, to be put in practice immediately.

Both the Miss Harpers were that sort of feminine minds which are like some kinds of flower-bells--the less fair the wider they open. Agatha wondered to see how very patient Miss Valery was over Mary's mild plat.i.tudes and Eulalie's follies. But Anne's good heart seemed to cast a shield of tenderness over everybody that bore the name of Harper. At length the young wife got tired of the after-breakfast discussion, which consisted of about a dozen different plans for the day--severally put up and knocked down again--each contradicting the other. The mild _laissez-faire_ of country life in a large family was quite too much for her patience; she longed to get up and shake everybody into common-sense and decision. But her husband and Miss Valery took everything easily--they were used to the ways at Kingcombe Holm.

"Oh, if your sister Harriet would but come in, or Mr. Dugdale!" she whispered to her husband, "surely they would settle something."

"Not at all; they would only make matters worse. And, look!--'speaking of angels, one often sees their wings.'--Is that you, Marmaduke?"

"Ay."

Mr. Dugdale walked in composedly through the sash-window, beaming around him a sort of general smile. He never attempted any individual greeting, and Agatha offering her hand, was met by his surprised but benevolent "Eh!" However, when required, he gave her a hearty grasp. After which, peering dreamily round the room, he pounced upon a queer-looking folio, and buried himself therein, making occasional remarks highly interesting of their kind, but slightly irrelevant to the conversation in general.

Agatha amused herself with peeping at the t.i.tle of the book--some abstruse work on mechanical science--and then watched the reader, thinking what great intellectual power there was in the head, and what acuteness in the eye. Also, he wore at times a wonderfully spiritual expression, strangely contrasting with the materiality of his daily existence. No one could see that look without feeling convinced that there were beautiful depths open only to Divinest vision, in the silent and abstracted nature of Marmaduke Dugdale. Nevertheless, he could be eminently practical now and then, especially in mechanics.

"Nathanael, Nathanael! just look here. This is the very contrivance that would have suited Brian in his old clay-pits. See!"

And he began talking in a style that was Greek itself to Agatha, but to which Nathanael, leaning over his chair-back, listened intelligently.

It was very nice to see the liking between the two brothers-in-law--the young man so tender over the oddities of the elder one, who seemed such a strange mixture of the philosopher and the child. These were the sort of traits which continually turned Agatha's heart towards her husband.

"Talking of clay-pits," said Duke, with a gleam of recollection, "I've something for you here!" He drew out of the voluminous ma.s.s of papers that stuffed his pockets one more carelessly scrawled than the rest.

"It's a plan of my own, for giving a little help to our own clay-cutters and to the stone-cutters in the Isle of Portland, who are shockingly off in the winter sometimes. Here's Trenchard's name down for a good sum--it will make him and Free-trade popular, you know."

And Mr. Dugdale smiled with the most amiable and innocent Machiavellianism.

Nathanael shook his head mischievously, greatly to the amus.e.m.e.nt of his wife, who had stolen up to see what was going on, and stood hanging on his arm and peeping over at the illegible paper.

"Excellent plan, Marmaduke--very long-headed. You give them Christmas dinners, and they give you--votes."

"Bless you, no! That would be bribery. We"--he reflected a minute--"Oh, we will only help those who have got no votes."

"Then the voters will all be against you."

Mr. Dugdale, much puzzled, pushed up his hair until it stood right aloft on his forehead. Soon a dawn of satisfaction reappeared. "All against us? Dear me, no! They would be pleased to see their poor neighbours helped on in the world, as you or I would, you know. They'd side at once with Trenchard and Free-trade. Come now, Nathanael, you'll a.s.sist? By the way, somebody told me you were very rich--or at least that your wife was an heiress. She looks a kind little soul She'll put her name down under Anne Valery's here?"

And he turned to Agatha with that air of frank goodness by which Marmaduke Dugdale could coax everybody round to his own ends.

"Ay, that we will, though I suppose I am not so rich as Miss Valery.

Still, we have enough to help poor people--have we not?"

She appealed gaily to Mr. Harper, but he replied nothing. She persisted:

"We need not give much, since Mr. Trenchard and Miss Valery are both on the list before us. We'll give--let me see--fifty pounds. Ah, now, just go up-stairs and fetch me down fifty pounds!" said she, hanging caressingly on her husband's arm.

He looked down on her, and looked away. He had become very grave. "We will talk of this some other time, dear."

"But another time will not do. I want it now. I fear," she whispered, blushing--"I fear, before I married, I was very thoughtless and selfish.

I would like to cure myself, and spend my money usefully, as Anne Valery does. Charity is such a luxury."

"Too dear a luxury for every one," said Nathanael sighing.

She looked up, scarcely believing him to be in earnest. Her open-hearted, open-handed nature was much hurt. She said, with a bitter meaning:

"I did not know I had such a very prudent husband."

He took no notice, but addressed himself to Mr. Dugdale. "Nay, Duke, you and your benevolences are too hard upon us young married people. We must tighten our purse-strings against you this time."

Agatha's cheek flamed. "But if _I_ wish it"--

"Dear, it cannot be, we cannot afford it."