Agatha's cheek glowed with anger at this supposed benevolent warning to herself.
“I dare say your sisters are very happy, nevertheless; marriage is not always a 'holy estate,'” said she carelessly. “But there was some other Dorsetshire lady whom Mr. Harper told me of. Who is Anne Valery?”
Major Frederick Harper actually started, and the deep sensitive colour, which not even his forty years and his long worldly experience could quite keep down, rose in his handsome face.
“So N. L. spoke to you of her. No wonder. She is an—an excellent person.”
“An excellent person,” repeated Agatha mischievously. “Then she is rather elderly, I conclude?”
“Elderly—Anne Valery elderly! By Heavens, no!” (And the excited Major used the solitary asseveration which clung to him, the last trace of his brief military experience.) “Anne Valery old! Not a day older than myself! We were companions as boy and girl, young man and young woman, until—stay—ten—fifteen years ago. Fifteen years!—ah, yes—I suppose she would be considered elderly now.”
After this burst, Major Harper sank into one of his cloudy moods. At last he said, in a confidential and rather sentimental tone, “Miss Valery is an excellent lady—an old friend of our family; but she and I have not met for many years. Circumstances necessitated our parting.”
“Circumstances?”
Agatha guessed the truth—or fancied she did; and her wrathful pride was up again. More trophies of the illustrious Frederick's unwilling slaughters—more heart's blood dyeing the wheels of this unconscious Juggernaut of female devotees! Yet there he sat, looking so pathetically regretful, as if he felt himself the blameless, helpless instrument of fate to work the sentimental woe of all womankind! Agatha was absolutely dumb with indignation.
She was a little unjust, even were he erring. It is often a great misfortune, but it is no blame to a good man that good women—more than one—have loved him; if, as all noble men do, he hides the humiliation or sorrow of their love sacredly in his own heart, and makes no boast of it. Of this nobility of character—rare indeed, yet not unknown or impossible—Frederick Harper just fell short. Kind, clever, and amusing, he might be, but he was a man not sufficiently great to be humble.