“So so; such things must be, and I, though a bachelor myself, have no right to forbid marriages. Allow me to congratulate you. Of course you have answered this letter? My brother knows his happiness?”
“He knows nothing; but I wished that he should do so to-day, after I had spoken to you. It was a respect I felt to be your due, to form no engagement of this kind without your knowledge.”
“Thank you,” he said in a low voice.
“You have been good and kind to me,” continued Agatha, a little touched, “and I wished to have your approval in all things—chiefly in this. Is it so?”
He offered his hand, saying, “God bless you!” with a quivering lip. He even muttered “child;” as though he felt how old he was growing, and how he had let all life's happiness slip by, until it was just that he should no longer claim it, but be content to see young people rejoicing in their youth. After a pause, he added, “Now, shall I go and fetch my brother?”
“No,” replied Agatha, “send for him, and do you stay here.”
“As you please,” said Major Harper, a good deal surprised at this very original way of conducting a love affair. After courteously offering to withdraw himself to the dining-room, which Agatha declined, he sat and waited with her during the few minutes that elapsed before his brother appeared.
Nathanael looked much agitated; his boyish face seemed to have grown years older since the preceding night. He paused at the door, and glanced with suspicion on his brother and Miss Bowen.
“You sent for me, Frederick?”
“It was I who sent for you,” said Agatha. And then steadfastly regarding him whom she had tacitly accepted as her husband, the guide and ruler of her whole life—her self-possession failed. A great timidity, almost amounting to terror, came over her. Vaguely she felt the want of something unknown—something which in the whirl of her destiny she could grasp and hold by, sure that she held fast to the right. It was the one emotion, neither regard, liking, honour, or esteem, yet including and surpassing all—the love, strong, pure love, without which it is so dangerous, often so fatal, for a woman to marry.