“I see,” he said, mournfully. “We are both punished, Agatha; I for the selfishness of my love towards you, and you--Alas! how can I make you happier, poor child?” Her tears fell still, but less with anger than emotion. “I know now, we ought never to have been married. Yet, since we are married”-- “Ay, since we are married, let us try to be good to one another, and bear with one another. I will!” She kissed his hand, which held up her drooping head, and Nathanael pressed his lips on her forehead. So outward peace was made between them; but in sadness and in fear, like a compact sealed tremblingly over a newly-closed grave. CHAPTER XII. “And this is Dorsetshire! What a sharp bleak wind!” said Agatha, shivering. Her husband, who was driving her in a phaeton which had met them at the railway station, turned to wrap a cloak round her. “Except in the height of summer it is always cold across these moors. But we shall soon be safe at Kingcombe Holm. Are you very tired?” She answered “No,” which was hardly the truth. Yet her heart was more weary than her limbs. During the few days that elapsed between Major Harper's visit and their quitting London, she had scarcely seen her husband. He had been out continually, coming home to dinner tired and exhausted, though afterwards he always tried to talk and be cheerful. To her surprise, Major Harper never again called, nor, except in the brief answer to her question, “that Frederick was gone from home,” did Nathanael ever mention his brother's name. “This is Kingcombe,” said Mr. Harper, as they drove through a little town, which Agatha, half blinded by the wind, scarcely opened her eyes to look at. “My sister, Mrs. Dugdale, lives here. I thought they might have met us at the station; but the Dugdales are always late. Ah, there he is!” “Who?” “My brother-in-law, Marmaduke Dugdale--or 'Duke Dugdale,' as everybody about here calls him. Holloa, Duke!” And Agatha, through her blue veil, “was ware,” as old chronicles say, of a country-looking gentleman coming down the street in a mild, lazy, dreamy fashion, his hat pushed up at a considerable elevation from his forehead, leaving a mass of light hair straggling out at the back, his eyes bent thoughtfully on the pavement, and his hands crossed behind him. “Holloa, Duke!” cried Nathanael, for the second time, before he caught the attention of this very abstracted personage. “Eh--is it you? You don't say so! E--h!” Agatha was amused by the long, sweet-sounding drawl of the last monosyllable, which seemed formed out of all the five vowels rolled into one. It was said in such a pleasant voice, with such a simple, child-like air of delighted astonishment, that Agatha, conquering her shyness at this first meeting with one of her husband's family, peeped behind Nathanael's shoulder at Mr. Dugdale. She saw--what to her keen sense of beauty was a considerable shock--the very plainest man she thought she had ever beheld! “Mr. Dugdale--my wife.”