Agatha sat down; smoothed her dress, and held her folded hands tight upon her knees, lest he should see how they were trembling.

Mr. Harper resumed. His tone was gentle, though with a certain strangeness in it, a want of that music which runs through all deep-toned low voices, and which in his was very peculiar.

"It appears to me--though nothing shall be done against your decision--that, considering all things, it would be better that our stay in my father's house were made as short as possible."

"Yes--yes." Two long pausing words, said beneath her breath.

"Accordingly I rode to Kingcombe this afternoon, and find that we can enter the cottage on Sat.u.r.day. To-day is Thursday"----

"Is it?--Oh yes. I beg your pardon. Proceed."

"If it would be agreeable and convenient to you, I think we had better arrange matters so. I have already told my father it was probable we should leave on Sat.u.r.day. Are you willing?"

"Quite willing."

"It is settled then. On Sat.u.r.day evening we go home."

Go home! To their first home! To that new bridal nest, which, be it the poorest dwelling on earth, seems--or should seem--holy, happy, and fair!

What a coming home it was! Better, she thought, that he had cast her adrift, or torn himself from her and placed the wide world between them.

Rather any open separation than the mockery of such a union.

"Home!" she cried. "I will not go--I cannot. Oh, not home!"

"To a house, then--call it by what name you please. To your own house, which we will merely _say_ is mine. Your comfort"--he stopped a little--"must always be the first consideration of your husband."

"My husband!" she repeated, almost in a shriek--and the old fit of fierce laughter was coming back.

At this moment Eulalie's curious eyes were seen turning towards the little room. Nathanael moved so as to shield his wife from them. "Hush!"

he said, sorrowfully, even with a sort of pity--"hush, Agatha. We are married. Between us two there must be, under all circ.u.mstances, honour and silence."

His manner was so solemn, free from bitterness or anger, that Agatha's pa.s.sion was quelled. She was awed as by the sight of some dead face, wronged grievously in life, but which now only revenges itself by the hopelessness of its mute perpetual smile. She remained staring blankly into the fire, plaiting and unplaiting the sash of her dress with heedless fingers. Eulalie might peer safely.

"There was another thing," resumed Nathanael, "which, before telling the rest of the household, I wished to say to you. I had business in Weymouth to-morrow; and--if"--

"Well? I listen."

"If--I were to ride there to-night"--

"Go." A soft, quick word--a mere motion of the lips--and yet it was the one word of doom.

After that, without saying more, Mr. Harper walked back slowly into the drawing-room, and Agatha sat by the fireside alone.

She heard the rest talking--complaining--reasoning--heard one or two persuasive calls for "Agatha"--but she never moved. Then came the bell hastily pulled, and the old Squire's testy summons for "Mr. Locke Harper's horse," and "was it a fine night, and the moon risen?" Then the drawing-room door opened and closed. No--he was not gone--not without saying adieu. He would surely pay his wife that deference. Outside the wall she heard his foot ascending the staircase, slowly, with heavy pauses between each step. She crept close to the farther door--behind the curtain, and listened.

"Agatha--where is she gone to?" said Mary, peeping carelessly into the dark room.

"Oh, she has followed her husband up-stairs, of course. Think of all the charges and farewells--the kissing and the crying. 'Tis a wonder she did not insist on riding with him across the country, and coming back at midnight, as I suppose Nathanael will do. La? what's to become of these very devoted husbands and wives."

Agatha crushed her hands against the wall She felt as if she could almost have torn Eulalie's heart out--if she had a heart. While in her own bosom, leaping up in all its strength, ready at once for heroism, love, and fury--for any n.o.bleness or any crime--was that fountain of all her s.e.x's actions, that mainspring of all her life--the fatal woman-heart.

She waited until she heard Nathanael descend the stairs, and then, as he pa.s.sed into the drawing-room to his sisters, she, by the little curtained door, pa.s.sed out into the hall. There she remained until the rest came; the sisters trooping after Nathanael, and the old Squire following likewise, to see that his son had the best and steadiest horse for a night-ride, which ride, he took care to observe, pointedly, was a most uncourteous proceeding, and warranted by nothing, save the fact of its being performed on the especial service of Anne Valery.

"Agatha--where is Agatha hiding herself?" said Mary. "She ought not to keep her husband waiting a minute.''

"Oh, no?" And the little figure, all in white, glided out from some queer corner of the hall, and stood like a ghost in the moonlight.

"Good night--good night." She threw out her hand with those of the others--threw it--not gave it.

Nathanael took the hand, but did not say good night--indeed he never spoke at all.

"Well, are you not going to embrace one another, stage-fashion? Don't let Mary and me interrupt you, pray." And the two Miss Harpers drew back a little from the young couple.

Mr. Harper bent coldly over his wife's brow, hid under the shadow of her heavy hair.

"No, no; not that," Agatha whispered, recoiling from his touch. "Never that again."

He opened the hall-door--saying adieu to neither father nor sisters--leaped on his horse, and was gone.

"Agatha, Agatha; where are you running? He is far down the road by this time. Come in, do! Are you so very reluctant to be left for a few hours alone?"

"Oh, no! Oh, no!" And Agatha went back to the drawing-room with her sisters-in-law.

Alone! The word she had repudiated rose up like a spirit, everywhere, all over the house. Not a room but what seemed empty, strange. Fast and busily the Miss Harpers talked--yet all around was, oh! such silence.

The silence that we feel in a house when some voice and step has gone out of it, which no one misses except we, and which we miss as we should miss the daylight or the sun.

When all grew quiet, and Agatha sat in her own room--expecting nothing, for she knew he would not come--but still sitting, with her hair falling damp about her, and her eyes fixed on the mirror for company, yet half growing frightened as if it were a strange object on which she gazed--then, indeed, there was silence--then, indeed, she was _alone_.

CHAPTER XIX.

Mr. Harper did not ride home by midnight, as his wife was well a.s.sured he would not do, though with some idle hope put into her mind by Eulalie, she sat at the window until the stars whitened in the dawn.

At noon--which seemed to come slowly, every hour a day--Mr. Dugdale appeared with a message, which by some wondrous good fortune he remembered to deliver--that Nathanael had returned from Weymouth to Kingcombe, and was waiting there. Agatha gathered with difficulty that her husband wished her to return with Mr. Dugdale.

"I will not go."

"That's right! I wouldn't do it upon any account," said Eulalie, with not the kindest of laughs. "I wouldn't be sent for like a school-girl.

Let Nathanael come himself and fetch you. What a rude fellow he is!"

"Eulalie!--You forget you are speaking of your brother and my husband. I will be ready in five minutes, Mr. Dugdale."

Duke lifted his placid but observant eyes, and smiled. "That's good.

Come along, my child."

He had never spoken so kindly to her before. It was as if he read her trouble. Her anger faded--she was near bursting in tears. In a little while she had taken the good man's arm--which Eulalie pointedly informed her was not the fashion at Kingcombe--and was walking with him to meet her husband.

Marmaduke talked but little; marching on leisurely in a meditative mood, and leaving his young sister-in-law to follow his example. Once or twice she felt stealing down upon her one of his kindly, paternal glances, and heard him saying to himself his usual winding-up of every mental difficulty: