Only sometimes, when she looked at her future husband—hardly able to believe he was really such—and thought how strangely things had happened; how here she was, no longer a girl, but a woman engaged to be married, sitting calmly by her lover's side, without any of the tremblingly delicious emotions which she had once believed would constitute the great mystery, Love—a strange pensiveness overtook her. She felt all the solemnity of her position, and, as yet, little of its sweetness. Perhaps that would come in time. She resolved to do her duty towards him whom she so tenderly honoured, and who so deeply loved herself; and all the evening the entire gentleness of her behaviour was enough to charm the very soul of any one who held towards her the relation now borne by Nathanael Harper.
At length even the good-natured elder brother's flow of conversation seemed to fail, and he gave hints about leaving, to which the younger tacitly consented. Agatha bade them both good-night in public, and crept away, as she thought, unobserved, to her own sitting-room.
There she stood before the hearth, which looked cheerful enough this wet July night,—the fire-light shining on her hands, as they hung down listlessly folded together. She was thinking how strange everything seemed about her, and what a change had come in a few days, nay, hours.
Suddenly a light touch was laid on her hand. It startled her, but she did not attempt to shake it off. She knew quite well whose hand it was, and that it had a right to be there.
“Agatha!”
She half turned, and said once more “Good-night.”
“Good-night, my Agatha.”
And for a minute he stood, holding her hand by the fire-light, until some one below called out loudly for “Mr. Harper.” Then a kiss, soft and timid as a woman's, trembled over Agatha's mouth, and he was gone.
This was the first time she had ever been kissed by any man. The feeling it left was very new, tremulous, and strange.