At the dining-room door Mrs. Harper let go her husband's arm.
“Why are you leaving me, Agatha?”
“Because I thought—I imagined, perhaps you wished”—
“I wish to have you with me always. Anne knows,” and he looked pointedly at Miss Valery, “that I shall never respond to, and most certainly never volunteer, any confidence to either her or my father that I do not share with my wife. She has the first claim, and what is not hers no other person shall obtain.”
Anne looked puzzled. At last she said, in an under tone, “I think I understand, and you are quite right. I shall remember.”
The old Squire was sitting in his arm-chair, the dessert and wine still before him. The cheerfulness of the dinner-circle over, he looked very aged now—aged and lonely too, being the only occupant of that large room. He raised his head when Miss Valery entered, but seemed annoyed at the entrance of his daughter-in-law.
“Mrs. Harper! I did not mean to encroach on your leisure.”
“No, father; it was I who wished her to come. Forgive me, but I could not bring Miss Valery into our family councils and exclude my own wife. She is not a stranger now.”
Saying this, Nathanael placed Agatha in a chair and stood beside her, taking her cold hand, for with all her power she could not keep herself from trembling. She had never known anything of those formidable affairs which are called “family quarrels.”
“Now, father,” he continued in a straightforward but respectful manner, “Anne will answer any question to prove what I have already told you—that it is at my own request she takes me for her steward.”