“Nonsense, child, don't look so serious. Men will have their way--especially husbands. Mine gets obeyed as little as any one; but now and then, when it comes to the point”--here Harrie looked astonishingly grave, for her--“I'm obliged to give in to Pa; and somehow Pa's always right, bless him!” How every word of one happy wife went like a dagger into the other wife's heart! But there was no shield. Here they were in Anne Valery's house, obliged to appear as cheerful guests, especially the newest guest, the bride. Agatha tried, and tried successfully, to play her part:--misery makes such capital hypocrites! “Isn't this a large house for a single woman?” said Mrs. Dugdale, as the two ladies passed up-stairs. “Yet Anne constantly manages to fill it, especially in summer-time. The dozens of sick friends she has staying here to be cured by sea-breezes! the scores of young people that come and make love in those green alleys down the garden! But then in the lulls of company the house is dull and silent--as now.” It was very silent, though not with the desolation which often broods over a large house thinly inhabited. The room--Anne's bedroom--lay westward, and a good deal of sunshine was still glinting in. A few late bees were buzzing about the open window, cheated perhaps by the feathery seeds of the clematis, which had long ceased flowering. There was no other sound. But many fine prints, a few painted portraits, and several white-gleaming statuettes, seemed as the sunlight struck them to burst the silence, with mute speech. “Oh, you are looking at Anne's 'odds and ends' as I call them. Rather a contrast, her walls and ours. I don't see the use of prints and plaster images--always in the way where there are children. But Anne is so dreadfully fond of pretty things. She says they're company. No wonder! A solitary old maid must find herself very dull at times.” “Must she?--then she is the more glad to see her visitors”--a pleasant voice, a silken-rustling step, which in Agatha's fancy seemed always to enter like daylight into a dusky room--and Miss Valery came to welcome her guests. She addressed Mrs. Harper first, and then Harrie, who looked confused for the moment. But it was not a trifle that could upset the equanimity of the honest-speaking Harrie Dugdale. “Bless us, Anne, how softly you walk!' Listeners,' etc.--You know the saying! But you might listen at every door in Dorsetshire, and never hear worse of yourself than I said just now.” “Thank you. When I want a good character I shall be sure to come to Harriet Dugdale.--And now, what is the news with the little wife! whom I have yet to bid welcome to Thornhurst. Welcome Mrs. Locke Harper.” Anne said the name, as she often did, with a peculiar under-tone of hesitation and tenderness; then, according to her frequent habit, she put her hand on her favourite's shoulder, and began to play with the brown curls. “Have you been quite well and happy since I saw you?”