“Of course,” he continued, “though I dearly like England, though”—and he sunk his voice a little—“though now it will be doubly hard to go away, I could never think of leaving Uncle Brian to spend his old age alone in the country of his adoption.”
“No, no,” returned Agatha, absently, her thoughts still running on this new Mr. Harper. “What profession is he?”
“Nothing now. He has led an unsettled life—always poor. But he took care to settle me in a situation under the Canadian Government. We both think ourselves well to do now.”
Agatha's sense of womanly decorum could hardly keep her from pressing her companion's arm, in instinctive acknowledgment of his goodness. She thought his face looked absolutely beautiful.
However, restraining her quick impulses within the bounds of propriety, she walked on. “And so you will again cross that fearful Atlantic Ocean?” she said at length, with a slight shudder. The young man saw her gesture, and looked surprised—nay, gladdened. But nevertheless he remained silent.
Agatha did the same, for the mention of the sea brought back to her the one only noteworthy incident of her life, which had given her this strange antipathy to the sea and to the thought of traversing it. But this subject—the horrible bugbear of her childhood—she rarely liked to recur to, even now; so it did not mingle in her conversation with Mr. Harper.
At last Nathanael said: “I would it were possible—indeed I have often vainly tried—to persuade Uncle Brian to come back to England. But since he will not, it is clearly right for me to return to Canada. Anne Valery says so.”
“Anne Valery!” again repeated Agatha, catching at this second strange name with which she was supposed to be familiar.
“What, did you never hear of her—my father's ward, my sister's chief friend—quite one of the family? Is it possible that my brother never spoke to you of Anne Valery?”
No, certainly not. Agatha was quite sure of that. The circumstance of Major Harper's having a friend who bore the very suspicious and romantically-interesting name of Anne Valery could never have slipped Miss Bowen's memory. She answered Nathanael's question in an abrupt negative; but all the way through Russell Square she silently pondered as to who, or what like, Anne Valery could be? finally sketching a fancy portrait of a bewitching young creature, with blue eyes and golden hair—the style of beauty which Agatha most envied, because it was most unlike herself.