speak to you: would you mind coming home soon?"

"At once, if you wish it," she answered, perceiving that something was
wrong, and feeling towards him too much of kindness and too little of
jealous love, to be in any way displeased at his strange behaviour.

"Will you do it, then, dear Agatha? Do it for me."

Agatha was ill at contrivance, but she managed somehow to get away; and
before it was dark she and her betrothed were out in the broad terrace.

"Now," said she, taking his arm kindly, "if anything is amiss, you can
tell me all as we walk home. Better walk than ride."

"No, we must ride; I would not lose a minute," Nathanael answered, as
he hurried her into a conveyance, and gave the order to drive to Bedford
Square.

Miss Bowen felt a twinge of repugnance at this control so newly
exercised over the liberty of her actions; but her good-heartedness
still held out, and she waited patiently for her lover to explain.
However, he seemed to forget that any explanation was necessary. He
leaned back in the corner quite silent, with his hand over his eyes.
Had she loved him, or not known that he was her lover, Agatha would soon
have essayed the womanly part of comforter, but now timidity restrained
her.

At length timidity was verging into distrust, when he suddenly said,
just as they were entering the square:

"I have used the dear right you lately gave me, in taking a strange
liberty with you and your house. I have appointed to meet me there
to-night one whom I must see, and whom I could not well see in any other
way--a lady--a stranger to you. But, stay, she is here!"

And as they stopped at the door, where another carriage had stopped
likewise, Nathanael unceremoniously leaped out, and went to this
"mysterious stranger."

"Go in, dear Agatha," said he returning; "go to your own sitting-room,
and I will bring her to you."

Agatha, half reluctant to be so ordered about, and thoroughly bewildered
likewise, mechanically obeyed. Nevertheless, with a sort of pleasure
that this humdrum courtship was growing into something interesting at
last, she waited for the intruding "lady."

That she was a lady, the first glimpse of her as she entered the
room leaning rather heavily on Nathanael's arm, brought sufficient
conviction. She was tall, and a certain slow, soft way of moving,
cast about her an atmosphere of sweet dignity. Her age was not easily
distinguishable, but her voice, in the few words addressed to Mr.
Harp