the while he saw how great her struggle had been.

For many minutes, holding her little head on his arm, the young husband
sat silent, buried in deep thought; Agatha never saw the changes,
bitter, fierce, sorrowful, that by turns swept over the face under which
her own lay so calmly, with sweet shut eyes. Strange difference between
the woman and the man!

"Agatha," he said at last, "I have quite decided."

"Decided what?"

"That I will give up my office at Montreal, and we will live in
England."

She was so astonished that at first she could not speak; then she burst
into joyful tears, and hung about him, murmuring unutterable thanks. For
the moment he felt as if this reward made his sacrifice nothing, and yet
it had cost him almost everything that his manly pride held dear.

"Then you will not go? You will never cross the terrible Atlantic
again?"

"I do not promise that: for I must go, soon or late, if only to persuade
Uncle Brian to return with me to England.--Uncle Brian! what will he
say when he learns that I have given up my independence, and am living
pensioner on a rich wife?"

Agatha looked surprised.

"But," continued he, trying to make a jest of the matter, "though I do
renounce my income in the New World, I am not going to live an idler on
your little ladyship's bounty. I intend to work hard at anything that I
can find to do. And it will be strange if, in this wide, busy England,
I cannot turn to some honourable profession. If not, I'd rather go into
the fields and chop wood with this right hand"--

And suddenly dashing it down on the table, he startled Agatha very much;
so much that she again clung to him, and innocently begged him not to be
angry with her.

Then, once more, Nathanael took his wife in his arms, and became calm in
calming her. Thus they sat, until the silence grew heavenly between
the two, and it seemed as if, in this new confidence, and in the joy of
mutual self-renunciation, were beginning that true marriage, which makes
of husband and wife not only "one flesh," but one soul.

CHAPTER XI.

It had been arranged with Emma Thornycroft that Mrs. Harper should take
the benefit of that lady's superior domestic and worldly experience--for
Agatha herself was a perfect child in such matters--and that they two
should go over the intended house together. Accordingly, in the course
of the following day Mrs. Thornycroft appeared to carry away the young
wife, and give her the firs