“What further?” He looked puzzled, but at last perceived her meaning. With an impulse eagerly caught, as Major Harper caught all impulses, good and ill, he cried--“Yes, I understand you. My first act, on coming to my property shall be to right poor Agatha.” “I thought so,” said Anne, kindly. “But you will not be able. There are others whose claims will be upon you the instant you have money to satisfy them--the shareholders. They know nothing of Agatha Bowen. Remember you expended her fortune as you worked the mine--_in your own name._” Major Harper looked confounded with shame. “And you knew all this, Anne--you! For how long?” “For some months--ever since I bought Wheal Caroline.” “And you never betrayed me!” “We were playfellows, Frederick.” She spoke softly, and turned her face to the other side of the bay-window. He forgot she was old now--he remembered only the familiar voice and attitude, the same as when in her girlish days she used to sit on the cushioned window-sill and talk with him for hours. “Playfellows! Was that all, Anne? Only playfellows?” “Only playfellows,” she repeated firmly. “Never anything more. You knew that always.” And, perhaps unconsciously, Anne looked down on a ring--plain, not unlike a childish keepsake--which she always wore on the wedding-finger of her left hand. Major Harper sighed, not one of his sentimental sighs, but one from the deeps of his heart. A smile, hollow and sad, followed it. “I suppose it is idle talking now, but--but--you were my first-love, Anne! If things had gone differently, I might have been a different man.” “Not so. God ordained your fate, not I. No man need be ruined for life because a woman cannot love him. Human beings hang not on one another in that blind way. We have each an individual soul; on another soul may rest all its hopes and joys, but on God only rests its worth, its duties, and its nobility. We may live to do His work, and rejoice therein, long after we have forgotten the very sound of that idle word--happiness.” She paused. “Go on; you talk as you always used to do.” “Not quite,” said Anne, with a faint smile; “I am hardly strong enough. Frederick,” and her eyes had their former lovely, earnest look--earnest almost to tears, save that girl-tears had from them long been dried,--“Frederick, for the sake of our olden days--of your mother whom we both loved--of your father who has gone to her--listen to me for a little. Trust to your brother--he will not act unjustly. Do not create dissensions in your family; do not let people say that the moment Mr. Harper's head was laid in the grave his children quarrelled over his property.” “I do not quarrel--I but take my right,” cried Major Harper, becoming again the “man of the world,” as he saw, the curious glances that from time to time reached the bay-window. “Thank you for this good advice; for which my brother owes you even more than I. But I am not a child now, nor a boy in love, to be talked over by a woman.”