“What! cannot you yet trust me?” returned her husband. “Nay, there is no fear. What is done is done. But you shall have your way.” And walking with them a little distance, he suffered Agatha with her own hands to post the decisive letter. After he left them, she told Mrs. Thornycroft the welcome news, enlarging upon Mr. Harper's goodness in resigning so much for her sake. “Resigning?” said Emma, laughing. “Well, I don't see much noble resignation in a young man's giving up a hardworking situation in the colonies to live at ease on his wife's property in England. My dear, husbands always like to make the most of their little sacrifices. You mustn't believe half they say.” “My husband never said one word of his,” cried Agatha, rather indignantly, and repented herself of her frankness to one whose ideas now more than ever jarred with her own. Three weeks' constant association with a man like Nathanael had lifted her mind above the ordinary standard of womanhood to which Emma belonged. She began to half believe the truth of what she had once with great astonishment heard Anne Valery declare--ay, even Anne Valery--that if the noblest moral type of man and of woman were each placed side by side, the man would be the greater of the two. But this thought she kept fondly to herself, and suffered Emma to talk on without much attending to her conversation. It was chiefly about some City business with which “her James” had been greatly annoyed of late--having to act for a friend who had been ruined by taking shares in a bubble company formed to work a Cornish mine. Agatha had often been doomed to listen to such historiettes. Mrs. Thornycroft had a great fancy for putting her harmless fingers into her husband's business matters, for which the chief apology in her friend's eyes was the good little wife's great interest in all that concerned “my James.” So Agatha had got into a habit of listening with one ear, saying, “Yes,” “No,” and “Certainly;” while she thought of other things the while. This habit she to-day revived, and, pondered vaguely over many pleasant fancies while hearing mistily of certain atrocities perpetrated by “City scoundrels”--Emma was always warm in her epithets. “The 'Company,' my dear, is a complete take-in--all sham names, secretaries, treasurers, and even directors. The whole affair was got up among two or three people in a lawyer's office; and who do you think that lawyer is, Agatha?” “I don't know,” said Mrs. Harper, feeling as perfectly indifferent as if he were the man in the moon. “I am not sure that I ought to tell you, for James only found it out, or rather guessed it, this morning at breakfast-time. And if the thing can only be proved, it will go very suspiciously against the people who have been mixed up in the affair, and especially against this Mr. Grimes.--There, I declare I've let the cat out of the bag at last, for all James cautioned me not!”