So saying, she laid over the bride's head a piece of old point lace, magnificent in texture. Agatha had never seen anything like it.
“Oh, Miss Valery, to think of your giving me this! It is fit for a queen!” And she looked at Mr. Harper, hesitating to accept so costly a gift.
“Nay, take it,” said he smiling. “Never scruple at its costliness; it cannot be richer than Anne's heart.” And he grasped his old friend's hand warmly.
Miss Valery continued, with a slight colour rising in her cheek. “This was given me twenty years ago for a wedding-veil. It has been wasted upon me, you see, but I wish some one to wear it, and would like it to be worn by a Mrs. Locke Harper.”
Agatha blushed crimson. Nathanael looked delighted. Neither noticed Anne Valery; who, her passing colour having sunk into a still deeper paleness, quietly returned to her seat, and soon after quitted the house.
CHAPTER IX.
It was a most unconscionably early hour on the wedding morning when Mrs. Thornycroft, who had insisted on mounting guard overnight in Bedford Square, to see that all things were made ready to go off “merry as a marriage bell,” came into Agatha's room and roused the bride.