“Yes,” was the low answer.
“Well then, Agatha, shall you and I have a little talk? We need not mind that foolish boy; he was a boy, just so high, when I first knew him. Let him walk up and down the room a little, it will do him good.”
She moved to the sofa, and took Agatha by her side.
“My dear”—(there was a rare sweetness in the way Miss Valery said the usually unsweet words my dear)—“I need not say, what, of course, we two both think, that she will be a happy woman who marries Nathanael Harper.”
Agatha, with her eyes cast down, looked everything a young girl could be expected to look under the circumstances.
“Your happiness, as well as your history, is to me not like that of an entire stranger. I once knew your father.”
“Ah, that accounts for all!” cried Agatha, delighted to gain this confirmation of her strange impression in favour of Miss Valery. “When was this, and where was I?”
“Neither born nor thought of.”
Agatha's countenance fell. “Then of course it was impossible—yet I felt certain—I could even believe so now—that I have seen you before.”
While the girl looked, a quick shadow passed over Anne Valery's still features, for the moment entirely changing their expression. But soon returned their ordinary settled calm.