“Anne, what a wise woman you are! Such a plan would have been years in coming into my head. And it's just the very thing. It will give him occupation and independence without hurting his pride. Moreover”—and a sudden thought dilated his whole countenance with pleasure—“I shouldn't wonder if it brought him home.”
“Hush!”
“Oh yes, I'll remember, we must be very particular. By-the-by, Anne”—here a bright idea seemed to strike the worthy man—“what a help he would be to us against the Protectionists! Wouldn't he see the blessing of Free-trade?”
Anne smiled, with her finger on her lip to stop the conversation; and they stepped in at the window;—Mrs. Harper taking care to glide away, lest they should suspect what she had so unintentionally heard. It was doubtless one of Miss Valery's numerous anonymous charities, which fell as abundant and unnoticed as rain.
“Now”—and Anne startled her godchild Brian by turning up his little rosy chin and kissing him—“now, who will come back with us to that grand family-dinner which the Squire has set his heart upon, and Aunt Mary is so busy-about to-day at Kingcombe Holm?”
All soon started; Agatha being kidnapped, not much against her will, by her gay sister-in-law, and driven across the moors at such a helter-skelter pace that Nathanael, who had insisted upon following them on horseback, received his wife at the door with an evident thanksgiving that she had reached home alive.
Miss Valery's little equipage came leisurely on behind. Nobody asked what she and Duke Dugdale had conversed about; but Harrie shrewdly suspected he had been talking poor dear Anne to death about the votes of her Kingcombe tenantry, and the probable chances of Mr. Trenchard and Free-trade.
CHAPTER XV.
To see the elder Mr. Harper sitting at the head of his own dinner-table was a real pleasure. He never looked so well at any other time. His grandiose air was then so mixed with genuine kindliness that it only enriched his courtesies, like the “body” in mellow old wine. He leaned graciously back in the arm-chair peculiarly his own, surveying the long table shone over by soft wax-lights, and circled by smiling faces, most of them women, as the old gentleman liked best. Even the plain Mary, taking the foot of the table, looked well and mistress-like in her black velvet dress: Eulalie and Mrs. Dugdale kept up the good appearance of the family; while Miss Valery and the young Mrs. Harper took either side of the host, and were duly honoured by him.