Agatha felt her spirit of opposition quaking on its throne. “But your father--your sisters. What will they all say at Kingcombe Holm?” “Nothing that I cannot combat. My father will be glad of our settling near him in Dorsetshire.” “In Dorsetshire!” echoed Mrs. Harper dolefully; and thereupon fled her last visions of a gay London home. Yet she already liked her husband's county and people well enough to bear the sacrifice with tolerable equanimity. “And whatever he says, whatever any one else says, I have no fear, if my wife will only stand by me, and trust that I do everything for the best.” His wife listened, not without agitation, for she remembered their first dispute, only a few days ago. Here was rising another storm. Yet either she felt weaker to contend, or something in Nathanael's manner lured her to believe him in the right. She listened--only half-convinced, yet still she listened. Anne Valery did the same, though she took no part in the argument Only continually her eyes wandered to Nathanael, less with smiling heart-warm affection than with the pensive tenderness with which one watches a dead likeness revived in a living face. At last, when he had expressed all he could--everything except entreaty or complaint--Mr. Harper paused. “Now, Agatha, speak.” She felt that she must yield, yet tried to struggle a little longer. She had been so unused to control. “You should have consulted with me--have explained more of your reasons, which as yet I do not comprehend. Why should you be so wondrously anxious to begin work? It is unreasonable, unkind.” “Am I unkind to you, my poor Agatha?” His accent was that of unutterable pain. “No! no! that you never are! Only--I suppose because I am young and lately married--I do not half understand you. What must I do, Miss Valery?” Anne looked from one to the other--Nathanael, who, as was his habit in all moments of great trial, assumed an aspect unnaturally hard--and Agatha whose young fierce spirit was just bursting out, wrathful, yet half repentant all the while. “What must you do? You must try to learn the lesson that every woman has to learn from and for the man she loves--to have faith in him.” “We women,” she continued softly, “the very best and wisest of us, cannot enter thoroughly into the nature of the man we love. We can only love him. That is, when we once believe him worthy of affection. Firmly knowing that, we must bear with all the rest; and where we do not quite understand, we must, as I said, _have faith in him_. I have heard of some women whose faith has lasted all their life.” Anne's serious smile, and the beautiful steadfastness of her eyes, which vaguely turned seaward--though apparently looking at nothing--made a deep impression on the young wife.