n
a Thane's daughter riding across the moors to the gates of that renowned
castle which, as Harrie declared, putting on the physiognomy of some
school-child drawling out a history-lesson, "was celebrated for being
the residence of the ancient Saxon kings."

"And this was the place," continued she in the same tone, pointing to an
old gate-post--"this was the place where His Majesty's most illustrious
horse did stop when His Majesty's most sainted body was dragged along by
the leg, in the stirrup, on account of the wound given him when he was
a-drinking at the castle-door, by his stepmother, Queen Elfrida. All of
which is to be seen to the present day."

Agatha first laughed at this comical view of the subject, then she
felt a little repugnance at hearing that stern old tragedy so lightly
treated. As she walked her horse along the road which might have been,
and probably was, the very same Saxon highway as in those times, she
thought of the wounded horseman dashing out from between those green
hills and of the murdered body dropping slowly, slowly from the saddle,
dragged in dust, and beat against stones, until the woman that loved
him--for even a king might have had some woman that loved him--would not
have known the face she thought so fair.

It was an idle fancy, but beneath it her tears were rising; chiefly
for thinking, not of "The Martyr," but of the woman--whoever she
was--(Agatha had not historical erudition enough to remember if King
Edward had a wife)--to whom that day's tragedy might have brought
a lifetime's doom. She began to shudder--to feel that she too was a
wife--to understand dimly what a wife's love might come to be--also
something of a wife's terrors. She wished--it was foolish enough, but
she did wish that Nathanael had not been riding on horseback, or else
that, in picturing to herself the dead head of the Martyr dragged along
the road, she did not always see it with long fair hair. And then she
wondered if these horrible fancies indicated the dawning of that feeling
which she had deceived herself into believing she already possessed. Was
she beginning to find out the difference between that quiet response
to secured affection, that pleasant knowledge of being loved, and
the strong, engrossing, self-existent attachment which Anne Valery
described--the passion which has but one object, one interest, one joy,
in the whole wide world?

Was she beginning really _to love_ her husband?

The answer to