“As you will! Nothing shall trouble you,” said he, with a gentle acquiescence, the value of which, alas! she did not half appreciate. “Only, remember, I have so few to-morrows.” This speech troubled Agatha for many minutes, bringing various thoughts concerning the dim future which as yet she had scarcely contemplated. It is wonderful how little an unsophisticated girl's mind rests on the common-sense and commonplace of marriage,--household prospects, income, long or short engagements, and the like. When in the course of that drowsy, dark Sunday afternoon, with the rain-drops dripping heavily on the balcony, she took opportunity formally to communicate her secret to the astonished Mrs. Ianson, Agatha was perfectly confounded by the two simple questions: “When are you to be married? And where are you going to live?” “And oh! my dear,” cried the doctor's wife, roused into positive sympathy by a confidence which always touches the softest chord in every woman's heart--“oh, my dear, I hope it will not be a long engagement. People change so--at least men do. You don't know what misery comes out of long engagements!” And, lowering her voice, she turned her dull grey eyes, swimming with motherly tears, towards the corner sofa where the pale, fretful, old-maidish Jane lay sleeping. Agatha understood a little, and guessed more. After that day, however ill-tempered and disagreeable the invalid might be, she was always very patient and kind towards Jane Ianson. After tea, when her daughter was gone to bed, Mrs. Ianson unfolded all to the Doctor, who nearly broke Miss Bowen's fingers with his congratulatory shake; John the footman, catching fragments of talk, probably put the whole story together for the amusement of the lower regions; and when Agatha retired to rest she was quite sure that the whole house, down to the little maid who waited on herself, was fully aware of the important fact that Miss Bowen was going to be married to Mr. Locke Harper. This annoyed her--she had not expected it. But she bore it stoically as a necessary evil. Only sometimes she thought how different all things were, seen afar and near; and faintly sighed for that long ago lost picture of wakening fancy--the Arcadian, impossible love-dream. She sat up till after midnight, writing to Emma Thornycroft, the only near friend to whom she had to write, the news of her engagement--information that for many reasons she preferred giving by pen, not words. Finishing, she put her blind aside to have one freshening look at the trees in the square. It was quite cloudless now, the moon being just rising--the same moon that Agatha had seen, as a bright slender line appearing at street corners, on the Midsummer night when she and Nathariael Harper walked home together. She felt a deep interest in that especial moon, which seemed between its dawning and waning to have comprised the whole fate of her life.