Once only, when they were riding homeward side by side, the fading sunset before them, and the low moon hiding herself behind the great black hill of Corfe, Nathanael suddenly said: “My dear Agatha, perhaps you would like me to tell you”-- “No,” she cried, with a quick instinct of reluctance. “Tell me nothing to-night. Let us be happy for this one day.” Her husband sighed, and was silent. CHAPTER XVII. “Agatha, will you come out and walk with me?” “Do you not see it is raining?” He had not indeed, though he had stood at the window in meditation ever since breakfast-time. As for Agatha, she had been so tired with her excursion the previous day that she had done nothing but sleep, and had scarcely opened her lips to her husband or to any one. Now, on this rainy day, she felt the reaction of her high spirits--was dull, dreamy; wished her husband would come and talk to her, and “make a baby” of her. She could not think why he stood at that odious window, pondering, counting rain-drops apparently, and then made the unaccountable proposition of a walk. “Raining, is it?” He looked up at the murky sky. “What a change from last night.” “I did not know you were so subject to elemental influences?” “We all are, more or less; but I was just then thinking about other things than what I spoke of. My dear wife, I want to talk to you very much. Where shall we go, so as not to be interrupted?” “Anywhere you like,” said she, resigning herself to her fate and to a long argument, which she supposed was about the new house. She did not remember about it clearly, but she had a floating suspicion that Nathanael was determined to settle the matter soon, and that she should have a hard struggle between the pretty house she liked, and Mr. Wilson's cottage, which her husband so unaccountably preferred. This was a matter in which she could not yield, come what might. Therefore the “anywhere you like” was in rather an ungracious manner. He seemed determined not to observe this. “Suppose we go into the conservatory;--you have never seen it. But put on something to keep you warm.” He wrapped Mary's crimson garden-shawl over her head--clumsily enough, for Mr. Harper was not a “ladies' man;” his whole character and habits of life being in curious opposition to the extreme delicacy which Nature had externally stamped upon his appearance. Pausing, he held his wife at arm's length, gazing at her admiringly. “Will that do? What a gipsy you look, with your red shawl and brown face!” “Pawnee-face, you know! Do you remember how you once called me so, and how your brother”-- “Come, let us go,” he said abruptly, and hurried her through the drawing-rooms. Agatha was rather hurt that his aspect should change so cloudily, and that he should thus quench her little reminiscences of courtship-days, so dear to every happy wife, and gradually becoming dearer even to herself. As they entered the conservatory, she shivered with an uncomfortable sense of gloom.