“Well, Miss Anne Valery and Mrs. Locke Harper! To be gallivanting about in this way! I declare it's quite disgraceful. What have you to say for yourselves? Here have I been running up to every train to meet you, and tell you”—
“What?” Agatha's cheek flushed with expectation. Anne grew very white.
“Now, Mrs. Harper, you need not be so hasty—'tisn't your husband. A great blessing if it were. All the town is crying shame on him for staying away so long.”
Agatha threw a furious look at her sister, and dragged Miss Valery along, nor stopped till she saw the latter could hardly breathe or stand.
“Stay, my child. Harriet, you should not say such things. Nathanael is only absent on business—my business; he will come home soon.”
These words, uttered with difficulty, calmed the rising storm. Harrie laughingly begged pardon, and was satisfied.
“Well, the sooner Nathanael comes, the better. There was a gentleman last night wanting him.”
“What gentleman?”
“Can't tell. He left no name. A little wiry shrimp of a fellow who seemed to know all about our family, Fred included; so Duke, in his ultra hospitality, took the creature in for the night, and this morning drove him over to Kingcombe Holm. There, don't let us bother ourselves about him. How do you feel now, Anne? Quite well, eh?”
“Quite well,” Anne echoed in her cheerful voice that never had a tone of pain or complaining. But it seemed to strike Mr. Dugdale, who had lounged up to her side. His peculiarly gentle and observant look rested on her for a moment, and then he offered her his arm, an act of courtesy very rare in the absent Duke Dugdale. Agatha walked on her other hand; Harrie fluttering about them, and talking very fast, chiefly about the wonderful news of yesterday, which her husband had just communicated.