“He was living--let me see--at 102 Rue--, one of the handsomest and pleasantest streets in Paris. I remember he said he was obliged to take this _appartement_ for three months, after which he was going to act the hermit and economise. Very unlikely that, I should think, for a man of Major Harper's social habits.” “Very,” Agatha said, being looked to for a response. She was much surprised to learn this of her brother-in-law; still more did she wonder at the rigid silence with which her husband heard the same. “I think, Mrs. Harper, we may safely say that his determination will not last. A mere fit of misanthropy after rather too much gaiety. In such a pleasant fellow as Frederick Harper we must excuse a few broken resolutions.” “We ought,” said Anne Valery, with that rare gentleness which makes men listen to a woman even when she “preaches.” “It is a very hard trial for any one to be thrown into the world with so many gifts as Major Harper. A man whom all men like, and not a few women are prone to love, goes through an ordeal so fierce, that if he withstand it he is one of the greatest heroes on earth. If he fall”--and Anne lowered her voice so that Agatha could scarcely hear, though she felt sure Nathanael did--“if he fall, we ought, through all the wrong, clearly to discern the temptation.” It was a new doctrine, the last Agatha would have expected to hear on the lips of such a sternly good woman as she had painted Miss Valery. She said so, adding, with her usual plainness, “I thought, somehow, that you did not like Major Harper?” “Nay, we were young together. But hush, my dear, your husband is speaking.” He was saying, with quite an altered expression, something about “my brother Frederick.” But after that mention Major Harper's name died out of the conversation, as out of Agatha's memory. Alas, not the unfrequent fate of the Major Harpers of society--meteors, never thought of but while they are shining, and forgotten as soon as they have burnt themselves out. By this time the two or three stray visitors--gentlemen-farmers, Anne's tenants, as Mrs. Dugdale whispered--had disappeared, and Mr. Trenchard was the sole stranger left in the drawing-room. Miss Valery did the honours of her house with a remarkably simple grace. “I give no state dinner parties,” she said, smiling, to Mr. Trenchard. “It is a whim of mine that I never could see the use of friends meeting together merely to eat and drink, or of offering them more and richer fare than is customary or necessary. But if you will stay and dine with me, and with these my own people, country fashion, even though you have been a ten years' resident in London”--