“Yes, save with those privileged people who called him Brian. But they were few. He had not the fortune or misfortune of possessing a thousand and one intimate friends. Yet all respected him, and remember him still. It will be a real satisfaction to have in the country a second Mr. Locke Harper,--Dear me, how like he is! Don't you see it, Miss Valery?” “There is a general likeness running through all the Harper family.” “Except the eldest son, though even to him I can trace some resemblance here”--and he bowed to Mrs. Dugdale. “And this reminds me that I knew beforehand I should probably have the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Harper in Dorsetshire. Only two days ago I saw at Paris Major Frederick Harper.” “Is Major Harper at Paris?” eagerly cried Agatha, caught by the name, which had so soon passed out of the daily interests of her life, that its sound was already quite strange. It reached her now like a comforting breath of old times--a something to catch hold of in the wide, dreary maze around her. Her former guardian seemed to rise up before her; with all his cheery, good-natured ways; his compassion when she had been newly made an orphan; his kindness of manner that remained--ay, to the very last. In a rush of many feelings that softened her voice to positive tenderness, she cried, “Oh do tell me all about Major Harper?” And this time she did not notice that, in the political discussion going forward, it was Mr. Dugdale who spoke, his brother-in-law having ceased the argument and become silent. “Madam,” returned the candidate, with a smile--perhaps a little too meaning a smile--“I will, with pleasure, tell you everything. I guessed from his anxious questions concerning you, and whether I had met you in Dorsetshire, that before he was your brother-in-law Major Harper had the happiness of being an intimate friend of yours.” “He was my guardian.” “That fact he did not inform me of. Indeed we had little time for conversation. We merely dined together, and parted almost immediately. He seemed in the midst of a whirl of pleasant engagements, as Major Harper invariably is. Charming, agreeable man! An immense favourite with all ladies.” Agatha answered “Yes” rather coldly. Her attention was wandering; she had missed the sound of her husband's voice altogether. But the next moment she heard him behind her. “Mr. Trenchard?” “Well, my dear sir? Are you also come to ask questions about your brother, whom, as I have been telling Mrs. Harper, I had the pleasure to meet in Paris?” “So I have just heard you say. Where, and how was he living?” Agatha thought this a strange question for Nathanael to put to a third party concerning his own brother. She was glad to hear Miss Valery observe, with genuine tact, that Major Harper was always careless in the matter of giving addresses.