income, and, I earnestly hope, fully equal to yours."

"I don't know what mine is. But why are you so punctilious?"

"Uncle Brian, impressed upon me, from my boyhood, that one of the
greatest horrors of life must be the taunt of having married an heiress
for her money."

"Has he ever married?"

"No."

"And is he a very old man?" Miss Bowen asked, less interested in money
matters than in this Uncle Brian, whose name so constantly floated
across his nephew's conversation.

"Fifteen years in the colonies makes a man old before his time. And he
was not very young, probably full thirty, when he went out But I could
go on talking of Uncle Brian for ever; you must stop me, Agatha."

"Not I--I like to hear," she answered, beginning to feel how sweet it
was to sit talking thus confidentially, and know herself and her words
esteemed fair and pleasant in the eyes of one who loved her. But as she
looked up and smiled, that same witching smile put an effectual stop to
the chronicle of Brian Harper.

"And I have to go back to Canada so soon!" whispered Nathanael to
himself, as his gaze, far less calm than heretofore, fell down like a
warm sunshine over his betrothed, "The time of my stay here will soon be
over, and what then--Agatha?"

She did not wholly comprehend the question, and so let it pass. She was
quite content to keep him talking about things and people in whom her
interest was naturally growing; of Kingcombe Holm, the old house on the
Dorset coast, where the Harpers had dwelt for centuries; of its present
owner, Nathanael Harper, Esquire, of that venerable name so renowned in
Dorsetshire pedigrees, that one Harper had refused to merge it even in
the blaze of a peerage. Of the five Miss Harpers, of whom one was dead,
and another, the all-important "married sister," Mrs. Dugdale, lived in
a town close by. Of Eulalie, the pretty _cadette_ who was at some
future time going to disappear behind the shadows of matrimony; of
busy, housekeeping Mary, whom nobody could possibly do without, and who
couldn't be suffered to marry on any account whatever. Last of all, was
the eye, ear, and heart of the house, kept tenderly in its inmost nook,
from which for twenty years she had never moved, and never would move
until softly carried to the house appointed for all living--Elizabeth,
the eldest--of whom Nathanael's soft voice grew softer as he spoke. His
betrothed hesitated to ask many questions about Elizabeth. The one of
whom