“I have not the slightest idea. Being so young, I recollect little about her—in fact, only one thing: that just as she was leaving me to go on in the little boat, my nurse called out, 'The ship is gone!' and the lady fell flat down—dead, as I thought then. They carried me away, and I never saw or heard of her again.”
“How strange!”
“But,” continued Agatha, gathering courage as she found her husband did not smile at this story, and beginning to speak with him more freely than she had ever done with any person in her life, “but you have no idea what a vivid impression the circumstance left on my mind. For years I made of this lady—to whom I feel sure I owed in some way or other the saving of my life—a sort of guardian angel I believe I even prayed to her—such a queer, foolish child I was—oh, so foolish!”
“Very likely, dear; we all are,” said Mr. Harper, gaily. “And you are quite sure you never saw your angel?”
“No, nor any one like her. The person most like, and yet very unlike, too, in some things, was—don't laugh, please—was Miss Valery. That, I fancy, was the reason why I liked her so from the first, and was ready to do anything she bade me.”
“Then when you consented to be married it was not for love of me but of Anne Valery?” And beneath Nathanael's smile lingered a little sad earnest.
His wife did not answer—even yet she was too shy to say the words, “I love you.” But she took his hand, and reverently kissed it, whispering,
“I am quite content. I would not have things otherwise than they are. And all I mean by telling such a long foolish story is this—teach me how to conquer myself and my fears, and I will go with you anywhere—even across the sea.”
“My own dear wife!” His voice was quite broken; so sudden, so unexpected was this declaration from her, and by the tremblings which shook her all the while he saw how great her struggle had been.
For many minutes, holding her little head on his arm, the young husband sat silent, buried in deep thought; Agatha never saw the changes, bitter, fierce, sorrowful, that by turns swept over the face under which her own lay so calmly, with sweet shut eyes. Strange difference between the woman and the man!