“I will,” cried Agatha, laughing, though with a tear or two in her eyes. To think how much Anne had guessed of the wretched past, yet, with true delicacy, how entirely she had concealed that knowledge!
They embraced silently, and then Miss Valery went into her own room, where, year after year, when all the duties and cheerfulness of the day were done, the solitary woman had shut herself in—alone with her own heart and with God. The young wife stood and looked with thoughtful reverence at the closed door of that room.
It was eleven o'clock, yet somehow Mrs. Harper did not feel inclined to go to bed. She had too many things to think of, too many plans to make and resolutions to form. Her life must settle itself calmly now. Its trouble, tumult, and uncertainty were over. She felt quite sure of her husband's goodness—of his deep and tender love for herself—nay, also of her own for him—only that was a different sort of feeling. She thought less on this than on the other side of the subject—how sweet it was to be so dear to him. She would try and deserve him more—be to him a faithful wife and a good house-wife, and make herself happy in his devotion.
She smiled as she passed through the hall where he had stood and said, “Do you love me?” She wished she had frankly answered “Yes,” as was indeed the truth; only his strong love had lately made her own seem so poor and weak.
Lingering on the spot which his feet had last pressed, she tried to fancy him beside her, and acted the scene over again, “making believe,” childish fashion, that she stood on tiptoe attempting to reach up to his mouth—a very long way!—and there breathing out the “Yes” in a perfectly justifiable and unquestionable fashion. And then she laughed at her own conceit—the foolish little wife!—and tripped off into the drawing-room, lest the old butler, who always went round the house at midnight to see that all was safe, might catch her at her antics. Still, were they not quite natural? Was she not a very happy and fondly-worshipped wife? and was not her husband coming home the next morning?
Entering the drawing-room, her high spirits were somewhat sobered down; its atmosphere felt so gloomy and cold. The fire had nearly died out—the ill-natured fire, that did not know there was a cheerful little woman coming to sit beside it and dream of all sorts of pleasant things.
“I wish fires would never go out,” said Agatha, rather crossly; and she stirred it, and blew it, and cherished it, as if it were the only pleasant companion in this dreary room.
“How I do love fire,” she said at last, as she sat down on the hearth-rug and warmed her little feet and hands by the blaze, and would not look in the dark corners of the room, but kept her face turned from them, as during her life she had kept it turned away from all gloomy subjects. Passionate anguish of her own making, she had known; but that stern, irremediable sorrow which comes direct from the unseen Mover of all things and lays its heavy hand on the sufferer's head, saying, “Be still, and know that I am God”—this teaching, which must come to every human soul that is worth its destiny, had never yet come to Agatha Harper.
Was it this unknown something even now tracking her, that made her long for the familiar daylight, and feel afraid of night, with its silence, its solitude, and its dark?
“I will go to bed and try to sleep,” she said. “It is but a few hours. My husband is certain to be here in the morning.”