sive, proudly-silent love which,
giving all, exacts nothing. Agatha's smile had in it something even of
shy tenderness when at the church-door she was met by Mr. Harper.
And when, after speaking courteously to the Iansons, he came, quite
naturally as it were, to her side, and drew her arm in his, she felt
a strange sense of calm and rest in knowing that it was her betrothed
husband upon whom she leant.

At the door he seemed wishful enough to enter; but Mrs. Ianson
invariably looked very coldly upon Sunday visitors.

And something questioning and questionable in the glances of both that
lady and her daughter was very painful to Miss Bowen.

"Not to-day," she whispered, as her lover detained her hand. "To-morrow
I shall have made all clear to the Iansons."

"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,
probabl