He looked so sad, that Agatha felt sorry for him. But his melancholy moods had less power to touch her than of old. His gaiety so quickly and invariably returned, that her belief in the reality of his grief was somewhat shaken.
She paused a little, and then recurred again, indifferently as it were, to Nathanael—the one person in his family of whom Major Harper always spoke gladly and warmly.
“You seem to have a great love for your younger brother. Is he then so noble a character?”
“What do you call a noble character, my dear young lady?”
The half-jesting, half-patronising manner irritated Agatha; but she answered boldly:
“A man honest in his principles, faithful to his word; just, generous, and honourable.”
“What a category of qualities! How interested young ladies are in a pale, thin boy! Well then”—seeing that Agatha looked serious—“well then, I declare to Heaven that, even according to your high-flown definitions, he is as noble a lad as ever breathed. I can find no fault in him, except that, as I said, he is such a mere boy. Are you satisfied? Did you want to try if I were indeed a heartless, unbrotherly, good-for-nothing fellow, as you appear to think me sometimes?”
“No,” said Agatha briefly, noticing with something like scorn the Major's instinctive assumption that her questions must have some near or remote reference to himself, while he never once guessed their real motive. That answered, she changed the conversation.
After half-an-hour's chat, Major Harper delicately alluded to the supposed business on which she had wished to see him, though in a tone that showed him to be rather doubtful whether it existed at all.
Agatha coloured, and her heart quailed a little, as any girl's would, in having to speak so openly of things which usually reach young maidens softly murmured amidst the confessions of first love, or revealed by tender parents with blessings and tears. Life's earliest and best romance came to her with all its bloom worn away—all its sacredness and mystery set aside. For a moment she felt this hard.