“Why, Major Harper, you look as dull as if you had been in love with Agatha yourself! And after what you confessed to me, I did positively believe she was in love with you.”
“Agatha in love with me! really you flatter me,” said Major Harper, looking down and tapping his boot, with his own self-complacent, regretful smile.
“I did indeed think it, from her agitation when I hinted at such a thing. And I never was more amazed in my life than when she told me she was going to marry your brother. I do hope, poor dear Agatha”—
“Don't speak of her,” cried Major Harper, in a burst of real emotion. “And she liked me so well, poor child! Oh, I wish to Heaven I had married her, and saved her from”—
Here a voice was heard calling “Mr. Harper—Mr. Harper,” but the bridegroom was nowhere to be seen. Some one—not her husband—put Agatha into the carriage. Several minutes after, Nathanael appeared.
“Where have you been? Your wife is waiting.”
“My wife?” He looked round bewildered, as if the words struck him with the awful irrevocable sense of what was done. Hurriedly he ran down the steps, sprang into the carriage beside Agatha, and they drove away.
Through many streets and squares they passed, for the breakfast was to be at Emma's house. Agatha sat for the first time alone with her husband. The sun just coming out threw a soft crimson light through the closed carriage blinds; the very air felt warm and sweet, like love. Agatha's heart was stirred with a new tenderness towards him into whose keeping she had just given her whole life.
For a little while she sat, her eyes cast down, wondering what he would say or do, whether he would take her hand, or draw her softly to his breast and let her cry her heart out there, as she almost longed to do—poor fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterless girl, who in her husband alone must concentrate every earthly tie.
But he never spoke—never moved. He leaned back in the carriage as pale as death, his lips rigidly shut together, his eyes shut too, except that now and then they opened and closed again, to show that he was not in a state of total unconsciousness. But towards his young wife no look ever once wandered.