"Ay, happy! perfectly happy!" The look and tone were such as Agatha never forgot. They expressed a bliss that of its intensity could not necessarily endure for more than the briefest time in this changing world. It belonged to the world everlasting.

"Will you go back, dear, and ask Brian to come to me? I would like to talk a little, alone, with my old friend."

Agatha obeyed. When she had delivered her message, Mr. Locke Harper rose without speaking. She saw him go into the drawing-room and close the door; then she came back to her husband.

For more than two hours Agatha and Nathanael sat, not liking to go in without being summoned. At last they ventured to pa.s.s the door. The silence within was so death-like that it half frightened them.

"I wish she would call," Agatha whispered. "She looked so strangely white when she spoke to me. Hush! is not that some one stirring? I must knock."

She did so, but there was no answer. At last, trembling all over, she caught hold of her husband's hand and made him enter.

The room was quite still--dimly-lighted--for the fire had been suffered to burn itself almost out. Anne sat in her arm-chair, with Brian kneeling beside her, his arms clasping her waist, and hers linked behind his neck. Neither moved, or seemed to notice anything; and the two young people, greatly moved by the scene, were gliding away, when a last glimmer of the fire showed them Anne Valery's face. They saw it--grasped one another's hands with an awe-struck meaning--and stayed.

In a minute or two Anne faintly spoke.

"I think there is some one near? Is it Agatha?"

The young girl flung herself on Anne's hand.--"It is I--and my husband.

May we stay? We, too, loved you, dear, dear Anne?"

"I know that! One minute, just one minute, Brian."

She loosed her clasp of him a little; the other two came near, she kissed them both, and bade "G.o.d bless them." Then raising herself up and speaking with all her strength, she said,

"You will bear witness, and say to them all, that if I had married, none but Brian Locke Harper would ever have been my husband: and therefore I have left to him Thornhurst, and all I have in the world, in token of my love and reverence--just as if--I had been--his wife."

With the last words, uttered very feebly, Anne sank back into her old att.i.tude. She lay there many minutes, her face beautiful in its perfect rest. The other face--his face--was altogether hidden. But they saw that, as his arms grasped her round, every muscle was quivering. The convulsion grew so strong that even Anne felt it. She opened her eyes, and tried to speak again.

"Brian, poor Brian? Be content! it is not for long--not for very long."

Her fingers began to flutter feebly on his neck. She fringed the grey locks round them in a childish, absent way, muttering to herself.

"How very soft it feels still! He used to have such beautiful hair!"

Then, as if she felt her mind wandering, and strove to recall it, that to the very last moment it might rest on him, she again forcibly opened her eyes and fixed them on Brian's face. They never left it afterwards.

The whole world seemed to have faded from her except that face. For a minute or two longer she lay looking at him, her countenance all radiant, until, gradually and softly, her eyes closed.

"Hush!" whispered Nathanael, as he drew his weeping wife closer to his bosom, and pointed out the beat.i.tude of that dying smile. "Hush--she is quite happy. She has gone home!"

THE END.