"Eh!--We know nothing! n.o.body knows anything. But everything always comes clear sometime."

At the verge of the town, apparently coming to meet them, she saw Nathanael--saw him a long way off. Her heart leaped at the first vision of the tall slender figure and light hair; but when he approached she was walking steadfastly along. Her eyes lowered, and her mouth firm set.

He came up, silently gave her his arm, and she took it as silently.

Mr. Dugdale and her husband immediately began to talk, so there was no need for Agatha to do anything but walk on, trying to remember where she was, and what course of conduct she had to pursue; trying above all to repress these alternate storms of anger and lulls of despair, and deport herself not like a pa.s.sionate child, but a reasonable woman--a woman who, after all, might have been heavily wronged.

Sometimes she essayed to consider this--to recall, as is so difficult always, the original cause of difference, the little cloud which had produced this tempest--but everything was in an inextricable maze.

Ere long, Nathanael's silence warned her that they two were alone, Mr.

Dugdale having made himself absent, and being seen afar off, diving into a knot of market-politicians. Arm-in-arm the husband and wife pa.s.sed on through the street. Agatha pulled her veil down, and caught more steadfast hold of her husband's arm--he was her husband, and she would maintain their honour in the world's sight. She felt how many curious eyes were watching them from windows--how many gossiping tongues would be pa.s.sing comment on the looks and demeanour of Mr. and Mrs. Locke Harper.

"Shall we go over the house now, or would you like to call for my sister?"

"No--we will go at once," returned Agatha.

Steadfastly--mechanically--the young husband and wife looked over their future home, which was all but ready for habitation. It was not a mean abode now; to Mr. Wilson's furniture had been added various comforts and luxuries. Agatha asked no questions--scarcely noticed anything. She merely moved about, trying to sustain her position in the eyes of the work-people that showed her round the house; stopping a minute to speak kindly to the servant who was already installed there, and who, dropping a dozen respectful curtsies, explained that she was the daughter of "Master Nathanael's" nurse.

Everything seemed arranged for Mrs. Harper's comfort, as by invisible hands. She never inquired, or even thought, who was the origin of it all. She could not believe she was in her own home;--her married home;--she felt as if each minute she should wake and find herself Agatha Bowen, in the old rooms in Bedford Square, with all things else a dream.

"Oh, that it were," she sighed within herself. "Oh that I had never"--

She paused here--she could not wish that she had never seen Nathanael.

They quitted the cottage and went out into the street, for country and town blended together in tiny Kingcombe. Mr. Harper closed the wicket-gate, and looked back upon the little house. There was an unquiet glitter in his eye, and his chest heaved violently for a few moments.

Then, with all outward observance, he linked his wife's arm in his, and they proceeded onwards.

At the end of East Street they met Harriet Dugdale--the Dugdales seemed always wandering about Kingcombe after one another, and turning up at intervals at odd corners.

"Here you both are! I was looking for my husband. Has anybody seen Duke.

Oh, where on earth is Duke gone to? He said he would be back in five minutes--which means five hours."

"I left him at the market-place."

"That's an hour ago. He has been home two or three times since then. Do you think he could get on for a whole hour without wanting the Missus?

Oh, there he is. Stop, and I'll catch him."

He was caught, and led forward prisoner by his pretty wife, who never once let him go, lest he should slide away again, and become absorbed in the mysterious electioneering groups that haunted the town.

"Now--Harrie--Missus, just wait--I'll be back in a minute."

"Not a minute! Anne has sent word that she wants you directly--you and Nathanael. You'll go, brother!"

"Whither?"

"To Thornhurst, to meet Mr. Trenchard and some other folk. You must start immediately."

Mr. Harper glanced towards his wife, who had dropped his arm; not pointedly, but as though release were welcome.

"What, couldn't it leave its pet again?" cried Harrie, laughing. "Bless it, n.o.body demands that terrible sacrifice. Do you think Anne would invite husbands without their wives? We are all to go--if you agree, Agatha."

"Oh, yes!" It was quite indifferent to her where she went, or what she did.

So they all four started in one of those inimitable conveyances called dog-carts, which seem to offer every facility for "accidental death,"

either by flying over the horse's head, tumbling under the wheels, or slipping off behind.

"Where will you sit, my dear? Beside your husband, I suppose? Mine drives."

Agatha answered by springing up beside Mr. Dugdale, with some vague jest about husbands being no company at all. The dark fit had pa.s.sed, and she was now in a mood of desperation.

They dashed on quickly; Marmaduke was a daring driver.

Sometimes Agatha even thought he would overturn them in the road. Little she cared! She was in that state of excitement when the utmost peril would only have made her laugh. Pa.s.sing under the three hills, and looking up at the old castle, silent and grey, the daylight shining through the fissured apertures that had been windows, she turned round and recklessly proposed to Harrie their scrambling up the green slope and rolling down again.

"E--h, my child!" said Duke Dugdale, turning his mild benevolent looks on the flushed face beside him. "Don't'ee try that, don't'ee, now! When people once set themselves rolling down-hill they never stop till they get to the bottom. It's always so in this world."

Agatha laughed more loudly. She wished her husband to hear how merry she was. She talked incessantly to Mr. Dugdale or Harrie, and held herself very upright, so that Nathanael, who sat behind her, might not even feel the touch of her shoulder. She, who had hitherto been so indifferent to everybody, so mild in her likings and dislikes--never till now had she felt such strange emotions. Yet each and all carried with them a fierce charm. It was like a person learning for the first time what thirst was, and drinking fire, because, in any case, he must drink. And with all her wrath there seemed a spell over heart, brain, and senses, which never for a moment allowed her to cease thinking of her husband. Every movement he made, every word he uttered, she distinctly felt and heard.

The way grew unfamiliar; they were pa.s.sing through a track of country, wilder, and more peculiar than any Mrs. Harper had yet seen in Dorsetshire--a road cut through furzy eminences, looking down on deep, abrupt valleys, that might have been the bed of dried-up lakes or bays; long heathery sweeps of undulating ground, with great stones lying here and there; cultivation altogether ceasing--even sheep becoming rare; and ever when they chanced to rise on higher ground, a sharp, salt, sea-wind blowing, not a human being to be seen for miles.

"Here's the gate. I'll open it. Now we get into Anne Valery's property,"

said Harrie, as she leaped down and leaped up again, mocking Nathanael's "brown study."

"What a change!" Agatha cried. "I have not seen such trees in Dorsetshire."

"They seem indeed to have grown on purpose for Anne. Her grandfather built Thornhurst. A queer desolate spot to choose, but it's a perfect little nest of beauty. There!"

The road opened upon a semicircular green plane, levelled among the hills, as it were on purpose, and planted round with a sheltering bulwark of trees--lime, chestnut, oak--rising higher and higher, until at the summit, where the sea-breeze caught them, grew nothing but the perpetual Dorsetshire fir. On the edge of the semicircle stood the house, this green plane before it, behind, a wide stretch of country, where the tide, running for miles inland, made strange-shaped lakes and broad rivers, spread out glistening in the afternoon sun.

"Anne, must always be near the sea. I don't think she would live even here unless she knew that just climbing those rocks would bring her in sight of the Channel. She has quite an ocean-mania."

"I'll learn it from her. I want a convenient little mania. Suppose I cure myself of my old grudge against the sea, and go from hatred into love, or from love back again into hatred--as people do."

"What a comical girl you are!"

"Very. Stay now. Wait till the horse is quiet, and I'll take a leap down--just like a person leaping into"--

"Hold, Agatha"--and she felt her arm caught by her husband. It was the first time he had touched or addressed her since they left Kingcombe.

"Don't spring down--it is not safe. Stay till I lift you."

"I do not want your help."

"Excuse me, you do; you are not used to this sort of carriage.'

"Stand aside--I _will_ jump down," she cried, roused by the contest, slight as it was, but enough to show the clashing of the two wills.

"Stand aside," she repeated, leaning forward with glittering eyes, giddy, and in so great confusion of mind as to be in real danger--"we will see who gives way."

"Are you in earnest?" Nathanael whispered.

"Quite. Go!"