“Don't talk in that way, or look in that way--don't. Be wicked! Speak cross! I will not have you an angel. I will not feel your wings growing. I'll tear them out. There.” She laughed--laughed with brimming eyes--until she sobbed again. Her feelings had been on the stretch for hours, and now gave way. Anne bent down from her serenity to notice and soothe the wayward child. “Poor little thing, she wants taking care of as much as anybody. When will her husband come home?” “Never--never!” cried Agatha, hardly knowing what she said. “I shall lose him--you--all.” Miss Valery smiled--the composed smile of one who ascending a mountain, sees the lowland mazes around laid out distinct and clear, and looks over them to their ending. “Yes, my child, he will come back. Absence breaks slender ties, but it rivets strong ones. Have faith in him. People like him, if they once love, love always. He will come back.” There was a great light in Miss Valery's countenance, which irresistibly attracted Agatha. She dried her eyes, forgot her own personal cares, and listened to the comforter. “Think how much we love those that are away. Once perhaps we used to vex and slight them and be cross with them, but now we carry them in our hearts always. We forget everything bitter, and remember only the sweet; how good they were, and how dearly we loved them. Our thoughts and prayers follow them continually, flying over and about them like wandering angels, that must be laden with good. And all this loving--all this waiting--all this praying, year after year--I mean day after day”--she suddenly turned to Agatha. “Be content, my child. He will come back.” Agatha made no reply. She was not thinking of herself just then. She was thinking of the life, compared to which her own nineteen commonplace years sank into nothingness; of the love beside which that feeling she had so called, looked mean and poor; of the patient endurance--what was her patience? And yet she had fancied that never was woman so tried as Agatha Harper. With a resolve as sudden as brave, and in her present state of mind to be brave at all it must needs be sudden, Agatha determined to put herself and her troubles altogether aside, and think only of those whom she loved. “Come,” she said, and rose up strong in the courage of self-denial. “We will indulge in no more dreariness; it is not good for you, and I won't allow it, my patient. You shall be patient, in every sense, for a little while longer, and then we'll all be very happy--_all_, I say, next year.” With this declaration she made ready to carry her friend off to Kingcombe--to her own little house--where she was bent on detaining Anne prisoner. Miss Valery declared herself quite willing to be thus bound for a day or two, until she was strong enough to go to Kingcombe Holm. “But I'll not let you go--I'll be jealous. Why must you be wandering off to that dreary place?”