“She would not have thought it so, poor dear Emma.”
“Were you very intimate with Mrs. Thornycroft? Did you tell her everything in your heart, as women do?”
Agatha was amused by the jealous searching tone and look, so replied carelessly: “Oh yes, all I had to tell, which was not much. I don't deal in mysteries, nor like them. But the chief mystery now seems to be, where are we to go? If Emma may not be troubled, surely Mrs. Ianson, or your brother”—
“My brother is out of town.”
“Indeed!” And Agatha looked as she felt, neither glad nor sorry, but purely indifferent. Her husband, observing it, became more cheerful.
“Nay, my dear Agatha, you shall not be inconvenienced. We will go first to some quiet lodgings I know of, where Anne Valery always stays when she is in London—though she has returned home now, I think. And afterwards, if you find the evening very dull”—
“Ah!” exclaimed the young wife, smiling a beautiful negative.
“We will go and take a sentimental walk through those very squares we strolled through that night—do you remember?”
“Yes!”
How strange seemed that recollection!—how little she had then thought she was walking with her future husband!