With a tear in her eye and a quiver on her lip, Agatha held up her young face to her husband. He kissed her, and there was peace.
But though he had made this concession, and made many others in the course of the next hour, to remove from her mind every thought of pain, still he showed not the slightest change of will regarding the cause of dispute. And perhaps in her secret heart this only caused his wife to respect him the more. It is usually the weak and erring who vacillate. Firmness of purpose, mildly carried out, implies a true motive at the root. Agatha began to think whether her husband might not have some reason for his conduct; probably the very simple one of disliking to see his name or her own paraded in a subscription-list, or mixed up with a political clique.
Nevertheless, he puzzled her. She could not think why, with all his tenderness, he so often put his will in opposition to her own, and prevented her pleasure; why he was so slow in giving her his confidence; why he more than once plainly stated that there was “a reason” for various disagreeable whims, yet had not told her what that reason was. All these were trivial things—yet in the early sunrise of married life the least molehill throws a long black shadow.
“I will be a wise woman. I will not disquiet myself in vain,” said the little wife to herself, as her husband left her, in answer to repeated calls from some feminine voice which had just entered the house, and was immediately audible half over it. Harriet Dugdale's, of course. To her—sharp-sighted and merry-tongued woman that she was—Agatha would not for worlds have betrayed anything; so, dashing cold water on her forehead to hide the very near approach to tears, she quickly descended.
Harrie was in a state of considerable indignation, mixed with laughter. “I never knew such people as you are! and certainly never was there the like of my Duke there. He set off to fetch you all to Corfe Castle—his own proposition. I waited an hour and a half—then I took the pony to see after you—and lo!—there he is, sitting quite at his ease. Oh, Duke—Duke!”
She shook her riding-whip at him twice before she disturbed him from his book.
“Eh, Missus—what do'ee want, my child?”
“Want? Don't you see what a passion we're all in? Abuse him, Anne—Agatha—Nathanael! Do! I've no patience with him. Didn't he say himself that he would take us all to Corfe Castle? Oh, you—you——” And Harrie looked unutterable things.
Mr. Dugdale gazed round placidly. “Really, now, that's a pity! Never mind, Missus! I only forgot.” And patting her hand with ineffable gentleness and good-humour, he opened his book again.
“Oh, you—you”—here she put on a melodramatic scowl—“you inconceivably provoking, misty, oblivious, incomprehensible old darling!”