leasantly chivalric air.
Then more seriously: "My daughter-in-law, choose. But remember that you
stand between your husband and his father."

Agatha, thrust into so new and important a position, felt a rush of
temptations to follow her own impulse. She turned appealingly to Miss
Valery, but Anne's eyes were fixed on the floor. She looked at her
husband, and met a gaze of doubt, anxiety, mingled with a certain
desperation.

"He knows my feeling about this matter; perhaps he thinks me a wilful
child, ready to take advantage of the liberty given me. He is sure of
what I shall say."

And she had half a mind to say it, as a condemnation for his so unkindly
judging her; but the girlish pettishness and recklessness went away, and
a better spirit came. She sat, her right hand nervously pushing backward
and forward the still unfamiliar wedding-ring, until in accidentally
feeling the symbol, she suddenly remembered the reality.

"I am a wife," she thought. "Under _all_ circumstances I will do a
wife's duty." And with that determination all the pleasant little
follies and temptations buzzing round her heart flew away, and left
her--as one always is, having resolved to consider the right and nothing
else--resolute and at ease.

She said very simply--almost childishly--taking her father-in-law's hand
the while, "If you please, and if you would not be angry, I would rather
do exactly as my husband likes. He knows best."

In these words she had exhausted all her boldness; and for a few minutes
after had a very indistinct notion of everything, save that the Squire
had walked off, not angrily, but in perfect silence, leaning on Miss
Valery's arm, and that she was left in the dining-room alone with
Nathanael.

CHAPTER XVI.

"So here is the result of family dinner-parties, and family-talks kept
up till midnight!" said Mary Harper, with a little natural acerbity.
"It is provoking for the mistress of a precise household to sit waiting
breakfast for a whole hour."

"Mary, be charitable! We did not know you were ready, and we were so
busy in my room. No laziness, was it, Agatha?"

"No, indeed: I think Miss Valery is the very busiest woman I ever knew.
How can she get through it all?"

"Only by first making up my mind, and then acting upon it. Your
husband's plan, too, I see. He and I shall get on as if we had worked
together all our lives. Shall we not, my 'right-hand' Nathanael?"

He answered pleasantly; he looked quite