“And we have satisfactorily ended all that business which you first put into my head,” continued Duke, rubbing his hands with great glee. “It was a risk certainly, but then it was for him. My children will never be a bit the poorer.”
“No,” murmured Anne Valery to herself.
“And think what an election we shall have! With him to make speeches for Trenchard, and argue in this wonderful way about Free-trade, and tell the farmers all about Canadian wheat! Glorious!”
“What are you both talking about?” cried Agatha, who had been considerably puzzled. “Do let me hear, if it is not a secret.”
“No secret,” said Anne, turning round, speaking clearly and composedly, and not at all like a sick person. “Mr. Brian Harper is coming home.”
Agatha clapped her hands for joy.
When they dismounted from the carriage, and had ordered tea at the inn, Anne still seemed quite strong. She said it was the sea-breeze that brought life to her, and stood at the open window gazing over the bay. Agatha thought she had never seen Miss Valery's face so near looking beautiful as now; it was the faint reflex of girlhood's brightness, like the zodiacal light which the sun casts on the sky long after he has gone down.
After tea,—at which meal Mr. Dugdale did not appear, a fact that nobody wondered at, since he was left to wander about Weymouth at his own sweet will, without Harrie to catch him and remind him that there was such a thing as time, likewise such sublunary necessities as eating and drinking—after tea Miss Valery and Mrs. Harper sat at the window together.
It was only an inn-window, the panes scribbled over with many names, and it lighted an ordinary inn-parlour, looking on the esplanade. Yet it was a pleasant seat; quiet, too, for the town was almost deserted as winter-time came on. The bay, smoothed by the ebbing tide, lay like crystal under a sky where sunset and moonlight mixed. Agatha ventured to look at the sea now. She beheld with a curious interest a sight till now so unfamiliar, taking a childish pleasure in watching the great white arm of moon-rays stretch further and further across the water, changing the ripples into molten silver, and making ethereal and ghostlike every little boat that glided through them.
By-and-by came a group of wandering musicians, playing very respectably, as German street-musicians always do. They converted the dark esplanade and the shabby inn-parlour into a fairy picture of visible and audible romance.