Agatha knew she had no right to forbid, even had she wished it, now. So she waited quietly through the long, dim, misty day--which seemed the strangest day she had ever known; until, in the evening, her lover's knock came to the door. She was sitting with Jane Ianson, near whom, partly in shy fear, partly from a vague desire for womanly sympathy, she had closely kept for the last hour. As yet, the Iansons knew nothing. She wondered whether from his manner or hers they would be likely to guess what had passed that morning between herself and Mr. Harper. It was an infinite relief to her when following, nay preceding, Nathanael, there appeared his elder brother, with the old pleasant smile and bow. But amidst all his assumed manner, Major Harper took occasion to whisper kindly to Agatha; “My brother made me come--I shall do admirably to talk nonsense to the Iansons.” And so he did, carrying off the restraint of the evening so ingeniously that no one would have suspected any deeper elements of joy or pain beneath the smooth surface of their cheerful group. Nathanael sat almost as silent as ever; but even his very silence was a beautiful, joyful repose. In his aspect a new soul seemed to have dawned--the new soul, noble and strong, which comes into a man when he feels that his life has another life added to it, to guard, cherish, and keep as his own until death. And though Mr. Harper gave little outward sign of what was in him, it was touching to see how his eyes followed his betrothed everywhere, whether she were moving about the room, or working, or trying to sing. Continually Agatha felt the shining of these quiet, tender eyes, and she began to experience the consciousness--perhaps the sweetest in the world--of being able to make another human being entirely happy. Only sometimes, when she looked at her future husband--hardly able to believe he was really such--and thought how strangely things had happened; how here she was, no longer a girl, but a woman engaged to be married, sitting calmly by her lover's side, without any of the tremblingly delicious emotions which she had once believed would constitute the great mystery, Love--a strange pensiveness overtook her. She felt all the solemnity of her position, and, as yet, little of its sweetness. Perhaps that would come in time. She resolved to do her duty towards him whom she so tenderly honoured, and who so deeply loved herself; and all the evening the entire gentleness of her behaviour was enough to charm the very soul of any one who held towards her the relation now borne by Nathanael Harper. At length even the good-natured elder brother's flow of conversation seemed to fail, and he gave hints about leaving, to which the younger tacitly consented. Agatha bade them both good-night in public, and crept away, as she thought, unobserved, to her own sitting-room.