"I shall meet him soon. I wonder how he will meet me. That will decide all.--Hark!"

She listened--with a vague expectation of footsteps at the door. But no one came.

"I suppose he is in his room still--our room." And all the solemn union of married life--the perpetual presence, the never parting night nor day, which makes estrangement in that tie worse than in any other human bond--rushed upon her with unutterable terror.

"If he has deceived and wronged me, how shall I endure the sight of him?

If I have outraged him, and he will not forgive me--oh, what will become of me?"

She heard various bells ringing throughout the house, and knew that she had no time to lose. She rose up feebly, with that aching numbed feeling which strong agitation leaves in the whole frame, and tottered to the mirror.

"I must look at myself, to see that there is nothing strange about me, in case I meet any one in the pa.s.sages.--Oh, what a face!"

It was sallow, blanched, with dark shadows round the eyes, and dark lines drawn everywhere. That first storm of wild pa.s.sion--that agony of remorse following, had left indelible marks. She seemed ten years older since she had last beheld herself, which was when she pulled out her long curls in the morning. She pulled them out mechanically now, trying to make of them a screen to hide the poor face that she had used to fancy they adorned. Then she flew like a frightened creature along the pa.s.sages, and without meeting any one, reached her chamber-door. It was a little way open; she need not knock then--knock and wait trembling for the answer. Perhaps Mr. Harper was not there, and so for a few minutes she was safe from the dreaded meeting. She went in.

The room was empty, but her husband's handkerchief and riding-gloves were lying about; he had apparently just gone down-stairs. Nevertheless, though a relief, it was rather a shock to her to find the room deserted.

She felt a weight in its silence, forewarning her of she knew not what; she looked round inquiringly, as if the walls could tell her what had pa.s.sed within them since she left. At last she took up her husband's gloves and laid them by with a care foreign to her general habit, and with a strange tenderness. When Mary's maid answered her summons, she could not forbear asking, carelessly, but with an inward heart-beat--"Where was Mr. Harper?"

"Mr. Locke Harper, ma'am, is sitting reading to master in the library."

He then could sit and read quietly to his father. With him, too, all household ways went on unaltered--with her only was the tempest--the despair. Her remorse ebbed down--her pride and anger rose. Light--a fierce flashing light--came to her eyes, and crimson roses to her cheeks. She dressed herself with care, and went down--though not until the last minute--to the drawing-room.

Mary met her at the door. "I was just coming to fetch you. Nathanael said you had been sitting in Anne's room."

How could he know? Had he watched her?

She answered flippantly, "'Tis very true. I have been enjoying my own company. Very good company too. Have I detained you, though? Is everybody here?"

Everybody was here. _He_ was here. Though she never glanced that way, she saw him, and the look he wore. To others it might seem his ordinary look, a little paler, a little more reserved, but she knew what it meant. She knew likewise, now that her pa.s.sion had subsided, how his whole life--his stainless life--gave the lie to the accusation she had cast upon him. She had outraged him in the keenest point where a proud honourable man can be outraged by his wife; her own hand had cleft a gulf between them which might never close.

At the thought her heart seemed dropping down--down in her bosom, like a bird whose wing is broken, it knows not how. Sick, giddy, she clung to Mary's arm for a moment.

"Nathanael, look here. What is the matter with your wife?"

"Nothing," Agatha cried. "I have only stupified myself with--with thinking. I will think no more--no more."

She tossed her head back with a fierce laugh. Her husband, who had half-risen at Mary's call, resumed his seat, making no remark.

He had never been used to show her much fondness or attention before his family, so it did not appear strange that in the few minutes before dinner he should talk to his sisters, and leave his wife to the courtesies of his father. For it was now an acknowledged fact at Kingcombe Holm that the Squire was growing very fond of Agatha.

Dinner came, the long, dreadful dinner, with the brilliant light glimmering in her face, and showing every expression there; with old Mr. Harper leaning forward to address her every time she relapsed into silence; with the consciousness upon her that there was no medium course, that she must talk and laugh, fast and recklessly, or else fall into tears; with the knowledge, worst of all, that there was one sitting at the bottom of the table whom she dared not look at, but whom nevertheless she perpetually saw.

Her husband had taken his usual place, and sustained it in his usual manner. There was the same brotherly chat with Mary and Eulalie, the same answers to his father, and when once, in the dinner-table courtesies, he addressed his wife, the tone was precisely as it had ever been.

Agatha could have shrieked back her answer, betraying him to all the household! This smooth outside of daily life--and with what below? It was horrible.

Yet she felt herself powerless to burst through it. His perfect silence, leaving his honour, the honour of both, in her hands, was like a chain of iron wrapped round her; however she writhed and dashed herself against it, there it was.

The Squire seemed to remain at table longer than ever to-day. He would not let his woman-kind depart. He had many toasts to give, and various old reminiscences to unfold to his daughter-in-law. She heard all in a misty dream, and kept on vaguely smiling. At last the purgatory was ended, and they rose.

Nathanael held the door open for his wife and sisters to retire--things went on so formally even in the every-day life at Kingcombe Holm. In pa.s.sing, Agatha felt as if she must burst through that icy barrier he had drawn; she _must_ meet her husband's look, and compel him to meet hers. She gave him a look, proud, threatening, yet full of hidden misery. He would surely answer that.

No! No response--not even anger. Some sorrow perhaps, but a sorrow that was stern, hopeless, undemonstrative, as was his own nature. If any wreck had been, it had already sank down into those deep waters, of which the surface appeared perpetually calm.

Agatha threw him back another look. Scorn was there and hatred--she felt as though she did really hate him at that moment. Her heart gave a leap, like a smitten deer, and then a "laughing devil" seemed to enter therein, and dash her on--anywhere--to anything.

"Come, Mary--come Eulalie, we must be very merry tonight, and my husband must join, for all his solemnity. Shake it off quick, Mr. Harper, or we'll call you a deciever--a smooth-faced, smiling cheat."

Laughing out loud--she caught his hand, wrung it violently, and struck it aside.

"How comical you are!" said the languid Eulalie.

"But," whispered sensible Mary, "are you quite sure Nathanael liked the joke."

"Who cares?" Yet Agatha looked back.

He had merely drawn his hand in again to the other, and his colour faintly rose. Otherwise the poor, mad, pa.s.sionate girl might as well have dashed herself against a rock. She grew still again, with a kind of fear. Her very limbs tottered as she went towards the drawing-room, and all the time that she lay there on the sofa, Mary bustling about her and chattering all kinds of domestic nothings, Agatha saw, as in a vision, her husband's face, so beautiful in its very sternness, so pure and righteous-looking, whilst she felt herself so desperately, daringly wicked. All the "black, ingrained spots," which had become visible in her soul, and she knew herself to be worse than any one knew her--appeared gathering in one cloud, until she sickened at her own likeness. For beside it rose another image--and such an one! Yet there was a time when she had thought it a great sacrifice and condescension that Nathanael should be allowed to love her. Now--

No, she dared not hear the cry of her heart. She dared not do anything but hate him, as he must surely hate her. Had he stood before her that minute, she would have flung away this softness, made her flashing eyes burn up their tears, and appeared all indifference. He might if he chose be as cold as ice, as proud as Lucifer;--she would be the same. She would never once let him suspect that which this day's misery had shown her was kindling in her heart. A something, before which the pleasant little vanity of being adored, the content of an easy unexacting liking in return, fell like straws in a flame. A something which she tried to call wrath and hate, but which was truly the avenging angel, Love.

It seemed an age before Mr. Harper came up-stairs. When he did, his father was leaning on his arm. The old gentleman looked tired, as if they had been talking much, yet seemed to regard with a lingering tenderness his son, once so little of a favourite. Why did he? Why did Nathanael soon or late win every one's attachment? And how could he show that reverent attention to his father, that cheerful kindness to his sisters, while _she_ sat there, jealous of every look and word? Each time he addressed any of these three, Agatha felt as if some unseen power were lashing her into fury.

It is a strange and terrible thing, but nevertheless true, that a good man, a kind man, a generous man, may sometimes quite unconsciously drive a woman nearly mad; make her feel as though a legion of fiends were struggling for possession of her soul, goad her weakness into acts which torture alone causes, and the after-blackness of which, presented to her real self, creates a humiliation which only drives her madder still.

Men, that is, good men, who are stronger and better able to do and to bear--ought to be very gentle, very wise, in the manner they deal towards women. No short-coming or wrong, however great, from the weaker to the stronger, can merit an equal return; and according to the law that the more delicate the mental and physical organisation, the keener is the power of suffering; so no man, be he ever so wise or tender-hearted, can rightly estimate the depth of a woman's agony.

Agatha rose, and went away by herself into a smaller room that led out of the other, not unlike her own pet sitting-room in her maiden days--the room where she had once stood by the firelight, and Nathanael had come in and given her the first trembling, thrilling love-kiss. She stood in the same att.i.tude now. Did she remember it? Was she, in that shadowy corner, with glimpses of light and fragments of talk pouring in from the other room, dreaming over that old time--old, though it happened scarcely three months ago--dreaming it over, with oh! what different emotions!

And when she heard a step--her ears were very quick now. Did she turn, and think to see her lover of old--so little loved? Alas! without lifting her eyes, she felt the presence was no longer that of her timid young lover, but of her husband.

Mr. Harper came in, and for the first time since that fearful minute when she quitted him, the husband and wife were alone. Not quite so, for he had left the door wide open--purposely, she thought. There was a full vision of Mary playing chess with her father, and of Eulalie lounging on the sofa, gazing now and then with idle curiosity into the little room.

It was insulting! Why, if he came to speak healing words, did he let his whole family peer into the mysteries which ought to be strictly sacred between the two whom marriage had made one? If only he had shut the door! If only she could do it, and then turn and cling round his neck, or even weep at his knees--for that frantic desire did strike her for a moment--anything, to win from him pardon and peace!

"Agatha, are you quite at leisure?"

To dream of answering such a tone with a flood of tears! or of clinging round a neck that lifted itself up in such a marble pride! It was impossible.

"I am quite at leisure, Mr. Harper."

At such a crisis, and between two such characters, the fate of a lifetime may depend upon the first word. The first word had been spoken, and answered.

Agatha turned to the fire again, and her husband to the shadow. Either it was fancy, or the effect of natural contact, but the one face seemed to flame, the other to darken--suddenly, hopelessly--as when the last glimmer of light fades out upon a wall.

"Can you speak with me for a few moments?"

"Certainly. Shall it be here?"

"I think so."