“You shall go, dear.”
Uncle Brian observed, never moving his eyes from the fire, “Harriet said that she—Miss Valery—was not quite strong this winter. Was that true?”
Agatha answered, “That it was only too true.”
Something in her manner seemed to startle Mr. Locke Harper; he threw towards her one of his flashing, penetrating looks.
“We have indeed been very anxious about poor Anne,” she answered. “But winter is a trying season, and we hope, in the spring”—
“Yes, in the spring,” repeated Uncle Brian, hastily. “What a gay garden you have for Christmas.” He opened the glass door, and immediately went out. They saw him walking about, backwards and forwards, among chrysanthemum beds and arbutus-trees, passing hurriedly, and with a bent-down, abstracted gaze, which beheld nothing.
“Does he know about her?” said Agatha to her husband. “You said you would tell him.”
“I could not, his mood was too bitter. And there are some things in which not even I dare break upon the reserve of Uncle Brian. He is as secret and as proud—as I am.”
“Ah, but”—
“I understand that 'but' my child. I know how much both he and I have often erred.”