“From circumstances which have lately arisen”—he did not look at Agatha, but she felt his meaning—“I fear I must return to America at once.”
He said no more, for his brother asked no more questions. But the tidings jarred painfully on Agatha's mind.
He was then going away, this man of so gentle, true and noble nature—this, the only man who loved her, and whom, while she thought of rejecting, she had still hoped to retain as an honoured and dear friend. He was going away, and she might never see him more. She felt grieved, and her lonely, unloved position rose up before her in more bitterness and more fear than it was wont to do. She became as thoughtful and silent as Nathanael himself.
Mr. Harper never attempted to address her or attract her attention during all that strange, long evening, which comprised in itself so many slight circumstances, so many conflicting states of feeling. Almost the only word this very eccentric lover said to her was in a whisper, just as his hand touched hers in bidding good-bye.
“As I am leaving England so soon, may I come here again to-morrow?”
“No, not to-morrow;” and then, her kind heart repenting of the evident pain she gave, she added, “Well, the day after to-morrow, if you like. But——”
Whatever that forbidding “but” was meant to hint, Nathanael did not stay to hear. He was gone in a moment.
However, that night a chance word of Mrs. Ianson's did more for the suit of the unloved, or only half-loved lover, than he himself ever dreamed of.
“Well,” said that lady, with sly, matronly smile, as, showing more attention than usual, she lighted Agatha's candle for bed—“Well, my dear Miss Bowen, is the wedding to be at my house?”
“What wedding?”