“That fact he did not inform me of. Indeed we had little time for conversation. We merely dined together, and parted almost immediately. He seemed in the midst of a whirl of pleasant engagements, as Major Harper invariably is. Charming, agreeable man! An immense favourite with all ladies.”
Agatha answered “Yes” rather coldly. Her attention was wandering; she had missed the sound of her husband's voice altogether. But the next moment she heard him behind her.
“Mr. Trenchard?”
“Well, my dear sir? Are you also come to ask questions about your brother, whom, as I have been telling Mrs. Harper, I had the pleasure to meet in Paris?”
“So I have just heard you say. Where, and how was he living?”
Agatha thought this a strange question for Nathanael to put to a third party concerning his own brother. She was glad to hear Miss Valery observe, with genuine tact, that Major Harper was always careless in the matter of giving addresses.
“He was living—let me see—at 102 Rue—, one of the handsomest and pleasantest streets in Paris. I remember he said he was obliged to take this appartement for three months, after which he was going to act the hermit and economise. Very unlikely that, I should think, for a man of Major Harper's social habits.”
“Very,” Agatha said, being looked to for a response. She was much surprised to learn this of her brother-in-law; still more did she wonder at the rigid silence with which her husband heard the same.
“I think, Mrs. Harper, we may safely say that his determination will not last. A mere fit of misanthropy after rather too much gaiety. In such a pleasant fellow as Frederick Harper we must excuse a few broken resolutions.”
“We ought,” said Anne Valery, with that rare gentleness which makes men listen to a woman even when she “preaches.” “It is a very hard trial for any one to be thrown into the world with so many gifts as Major Harper. A man whom all men like, and not a few women are prone to love, goes through an ordeal so fierce, that if he withstand it he is one of the greatest heroes on earth. If he fall”—and Anne lowered her voice so that Agatha could scarcely hear, though she felt sure Nathanael did—“if he fall, we ought, through all the wrong, clearly to discern the temptation.”