Agatha was surprised that, in spite of all the tenderness of his manner, he did not attempt the slightest explanation. And still more surprised was she to find her own questions, wonderings, reproaches, dying away unuttered in the atmosphere of silentness which always seemed to surround Nathanael Harper. This silentness had from the very beginning of their acquaintance induced in her that faint awe, which is the most ominous yet most delicious feeling that a woman can have towards a man. It seems an instinctive acknowledgment of the much-condemned, much-perverted, yet divine and unalterable law given with the first human marriage--“_He shall rule over thee_.” After all that Agatha had intended to say, she said--nothing. She only turned her face to her husband, and received his kiss. Very soft it was--even cold--as though he dared not trust himself to the least expression of feeling. He merely whispered, “Now, come down with me;” and she went. But on the staircase she could not forbear saying, “I thought you two would never have done talking. Is it anything very serious? I trust not, since your brother walked down the street so cheerfully.” “Did he?--and--were you watching him?” “Yes, indeed,” returned Agatha, for she had no notion of doing anything that she would be afterwards ashamed to confess. “But what put him into such a state of mind, and made him behave to me so strangely?” “How dared he behave?” asked the husband, with quickness, then stopped. “Forgive me. You know, I have never inquired--I never shall inquire about anything.”--Again he paused, seeing how his mood alarmed her. “Do not be afraid of me! Poor child--poor little Agatha!” Waiting for no reply, he led her in to dinner. While the servants waited, Mr. Harper scarcely spoke, except when necessary. Only in his lightest word addressed to Agatha was a certain tremulousness--in his most careless look a constant tender observance, which soothed her mind, and quite removed from thence the impression of his hasty and incomprehensible words. She laid all to the charge of Major Harper and his unpleasant business. At dessert, Nathanael sat varying his long silences with a few commonplace remarks which showed how oblivious he was of all around him, and how sedulously he tried to disguise the fact, and rise to the surface of conversation. Agatha's curiosity returned, not unmingled with a feeling tenderer, more woman-like, more wife-like, which showed itself in stray peeps at him from under the lashes of net brown eyes. At length she took courage to say: “Now--since we seem to have nothing better to talk about, will you tell me what you and your brother were plotting together, that you kept poor little me out of the room so long?” “Plotting together? Surely, Agatha, you did not mean to use that word?”