It was an idle fancy, but beneath it her tears were rising; chiefly for thinking, not of “The Martyr,” but of the woman--whoever she was--(Agatha had not historical erudition enough to remember if King Edward had a wife)--to whom that day's tragedy might have brought a lifetime's doom. She began to shudder--to feel that she too was a wife--to understand dimly what a wife's love might come to be--also something of a wife's terrors. She wished--it was foolish enough, but she did wish that Nathanael had not been riding on horseback, or else that, in picturing to herself the dead head of the Martyr dragged along the road, she did not always see it with long fair hair. And then she wondered if these horrible fancies indicated the dawning of that feeling which she had deceived herself into believing she already possessed. Was she beginning to find out the difference between that quiet response to secured affection, that pleasant knowledge of being loved, and the strong, engrossing, self-existent attachment which Anne Valery described--the passion which has but one object, one interest, one joy, in the whole wide world? Was she beginning really _to love_ her husband? The answer to that question involved so much, both of what had been, and what was yet to come, that Agatha dared not ponder over it. “Mrs. Harper! Mrs. Harper!” She mused no longer, but hurried on after the Dugdales. It was not to point out the Castle that Harrie had been so vociferous, but to show a place which she evidently deemed far more interesting. “Do you see that white house far among the trees? That's where my Duke was born. He lived there in peace and quietness till he got acquainted with Uncle Brian, and came to Kingcombe Holm and fell in love with me.” “How did he do it? I want to know what is the fashion of such things in Dorset.” “How did Duke fall in love with me? Really I can't tell. I was fifteen or so--a mere baby! He first gave me a doll, and then he wanted to marry me!” “But how did he make love, or 'propose' as they call it?” persisted Agatha, to whom the idea of Marmaduke Dugdale in that character was irresistibly funny. “Make love? Propose? Bless you, my dear, he never did either! Somehow it all came quite naturally. We belonged to one another.” The very phrase Anne Valery had used! It made Nathanael's wife rather thoughtful. She wondered what was the feeling like, when people “belonged to one another.” But she had no time for meditation; for now the great grey ruin loomed in sight, and everybody, including the shouting boys in the carriage behind, was eager to point it out, especially when Agatha made the lamentable confession that she had never seen a ruined castle in her life before.