“I assure you, Mrs. Harper, it is a pleasure to all the neighbourhood that your husband has come back from America. I remember him quite a child, and his uncle a young man. And really, how like he is, in both feature and voice, to what his uncle used to be at that time. As he stands there talking, I could almost fancy it was Mr. Locke Harper.”
“Mr. Locke Harper,” repeated Agatha. “Was that the name Uncle Brian went by?”
“Yes, save with those privileged people who called him Brian. But they were few. He had not the fortune or misfortune of possessing a thousand and one intimate friends. Yet all respected him, and remember him still. It will be a real satisfaction to have in the country a second Mr. Locke Harper,—Dear me, how like he is! Don't you see it, Miss Valery?”
“There is a general likeness running through all the Harper family.”
“Except the eldest son, though even to him I can trace some resemblance here”—and he bowed to Mrs. Dugdale. “And this reminds me that I knew beforehand I should probably have the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Harper in Dorsetshire. Only two days ago I saw at Paris Major Frederick Harper.”
“Is Major Harper at Paris?” eagerly cried Agatha, caught by the name, which had so soon passed out of the daily interests of her life, that its sound was already quite strange. It reached her now like a comforting breath of old times—a something to catch hold of in the wide, dreary maze around her. Her former guardian seemed to rise up before her; with all his cheery, good-natured ways; his compassion when she had been newly made an orphan; his kindness of manner that remained—ay, to the very last.
In a rush of many feelings that softened her voice to positive tenderness, she cried, “Oh do tell me all about Major Harper?”
And this time she did not notice that, in the political discussion going forward, it was Mr. Dugdale who spoke, his brother-in-law having ceased the argument and become silent.
“Madam,” returned the candidate, with a smile—perhaps a little too meaning a smile—“I will, with pleasure, tell you everything. I guessed from his anxious questions concerning you, and whether I had met you in Dorsetshire, that before he was your brother-in-law Major Harper had the happiness of being an intimate friend of yours.”
“He was my guardian.”