A heart which now began to know itself--at once its fulness and its cravings. A heart thirsting for that love, wanting which, marriage is but a dead corrupting body without the soul--love, the true life-union, consisting of oneness of spirit, sympathy, thought, and will--love which would have been the same had they lived twenty thousand miles apart, ay, had they never married at all, but waited until eternity united those whom no earthly destinies could altogether put asunder. Now out of her own soul she learnt--what not one human being in a million learns, and yet the truth remains the same--the unity, the immortality, the divineness of Love, to which the One Immortal and Divine gave His own name. She sat in her usual quiet mood, she did everything in such a quiet, self-contained fashion now--sat, idly talked to by Major Harper, whom she did not hear at all. She only heard, at the further end of the table, Nathanael talking to Mary. Sometimes she stole a glance, and thought how cordial his manner to his sister was, and how tender his eyes could look at times. And she sighed. At her sigh, her husband would turn, see her listening to Frederick with that absent downcast look--and become silent. Not an angry jealous silence now--his whole manner showed how much he honoured and trusted his wife--but the hush of a deep, abiding pain, a sense of loss which nothing could ever reveal or remove. But men must keep up worldly duties; it is only women, and not all of these, who can afford the luxury of a broken heart. Mr. Harper rose, nerved for the day's task--a painful one, as all the family knew. The elder brother had shrunk from it, and it had been left to Nathanael, who in all things was now the thinker and the doer. The impression of this had fixed itself outwardly, effacing the last remnant of his boyish looks. As he stood leaning over Mary, Agatha thought he had already the aspect of middle age. “It will not take me long, Mary, since you say my father kept his papers in such order. Probably I shall have done by the time the Dugdales come. You are quite sure there was a will?” “Quite sure; you will probably find it in the cabinet. I saw him looking there the very afternoon of the day he died. I was calling him to dinner, but his back was turned, and I could not make him understand--poor father!” Mary's eyes filled, but the younger brother said a few kind words, and her grief ceased The rest were silent and serious, until Nathanael, going away, addressed Frederick rather formally. All speech between them, though smooth, was invariably formal and rare. “You are satisfied to leave this duty in my hands?--you do not wish to share it?” “Oh, no, no!” hurriedly answered the other, walking away in the sunny window-seat, and breathing its freshness eagerly, as if to drive away the bare thought of death and the grave. Nathanael went out--but ere he had closed the door a little hand touched him. “What do you want, Agatha?”