“Must you always have sunshine, Agatha? Could you not walk a little while in the shade? Not if I were with you?” She cast her eyes down, trembling with a vague apprehension of ill; then gazed in the kind face that grew kinder and dearer every day. She put her hand in her husband's without speaking a word. He folded it up close, the soft little hand, and looked pleased. “Come now, let us go into the garden.” Agatha wrapped a shawl about her, gipsy-fashion, and met him there. It was one of those mild days that sometimes come near upon Christmas, as if the year had repented itself, and just before dying, was dreaming of its lost springtide. The arbutus-trees were glistening with sunshine, and under the high wall a row of camellias, grown in great bushes in the open air, the pride of Anne's gardener and of the whole county of Dorset, were beginning to show buds, red, white, and variegated, as beautiful as summer roses. “I used to be so fond of this walk when I was a little lad,” said Nathanael, “I remember, after I had the scarlet-fever, being nursed well here; and how every day when my brother came, he used to carry me up and down this sunny walk on his back. Poor Fred! he was the kindest fellow to children.” “Kindness seems his nature. I think that if your brother did any harm it would never be through malice or intention, but only weakness of character.” “I perceive,” Mr. Harper said, abruptly--“you have no bitter feeling against my brother Frederick.” “How could I? He never did me wrong. Except, perhaps, it was his carelessness that made me poor.” Here Agatha hesitated, for she was touching upon a dangerous subject--one so fraught with present emotion and with references to past suffering, that hitherto both husband and wife had by tacit consent abstained from it. There had been no confidential talk of any kind between them. “Go on,” her husband said; “we must speak of these things some time; why not now?” “Though he made me poor,” she continued, “it was probably through accident. And I have no fear of poverty”--how simply and ignorantly she pronounced that terrible word!--“I do not mind it in the least, if you do not.” “Was there any need for that _if_, Agatha?” “No,” she replied, and was silent. Shame and remorse gathered over her like a cloud. She thought of those wicked words she had spoken--words which to this day he had neither answered nor revenged. He had even suffered the smooth surface of daily kindnesses to grow over that gaping wound of division. Was it there still? Did he remember it? Could she dare to allude to it, if only to implore him to forgive her? She would in a little time--perhaps when they were by themselves in their own house, when she would throw herself at his knees and weep out a confession that was beyond all words--words could but insult him the more. There are some wounds that can only be healed by love and silence.