Nathanael and his wife hung back, letting Mr. Harper meet her first.
She rose and held out both hands to him. “Welcome home again—welcome home!”
He said nothing, but grasped the hands, and retained them fast. There was a long, long look, eye to eye, face to face,—a look, in which were gathered and summed up all the years since they were young, together,—and then the two old friends sat down side by side. Agatha thought it strange that they should meet in such a calm, commonplace way—but then she was young. She did not know how quietly flows the outward surface of a tide that has flowed on, deep, solemn, and changeless, for five-and-twenty years.
In a little while they were all sitting round the fire—the merry Christmas fire with its blazing pine-log—talking just as naturally and familiarly as though no emotion had stirred them. Anne Valery, resting in her arm-chair, looked on and smiled. She talked little, but listened to the rest, and by an inexplicable sweet calmness, made them all so much at ease, that it seemed to Agatha as if they four had known one another for a whole lifetime, and been always as happy as now.
As the evening advanced, the Christmas dinner was announced.
“I am sorry I cannot sit at the head of my own table to-day, but”—and Miss Valery gently laid her hand on Brian's arm—“you will take my place, old friend?”
He made some unintelligible answer, and they all left the drawing-room. It was a rather silent dinner; yet, somehow, no one looked sad. No one could, with Anne's cheerful influence pervading the whole house.
Agatha soon rose and rejoined her. She was sitting just as they had left her—but whether it was through the light being dimmer, or through a certain thoughtfulness in her face, Agatha thought she did not look quite the same.
“Are you well?” Are you sure you are not tired? And”—here Agatha ventured to wrap her arms round her and gaze up in her eyes with a fulness of meaning—are you happy?”
“Ay, happy! perfectly happy!” The look and tone were such as Agatha never forgot. They expressed a bliss that of its intensity could not necessarily endure for more than the briefest time in this changing world. It belonged to the world everlasting.