you sit, my dear? Beside your husband, I suppose? Mine
drives."

Agatha answered by springing up beside Mr. Dugdale, with some vague jest
about husbands being no company at all. The dark fit had passed, and she
was now in a mood of desperation.

They dashed on quickly; Marmaduke was a daring driver.

Sometimes Agatha even thought he would overturn them in the road. Little
she cared! She was in that state of excitement when the utmost peril
would only have made her laugh. Passing under the three hills, and
looking up at the old castle, silent and grey, the daylight shining
through the fissured apertures that had been windows, she turned round
and recklessly proposed to Harrie their scrambling up the green slope
and rolling down again.

"E--h, my child!" said Duke Dugdale, turning his mild benevolent looks
on the flushed face beside him. "Don't'ee try that, don't'ee, now! When
people once set themselves rolling down-hill they never stop till they
get to the bottom. It's always so in this world."

Agatha laughed more loudly. She wished her husband to hear how merry she
was. She talked incessantly to Mr. Dugdale or Harrie, and held herself
very upright, so that Nathanael, who sat behind her, might not
even feel the touch of her shoulder. She, who had hitherto been so
indifferent to everybody, so mild in her likings and dislikes--never
till now had she felt such strange emotions. Yet each and all carried
with them a fierce charm. It was like a person learning for the first
time what thirst was, and drinking fire, because, in any case, he must
drink. And with all her wrath there seemed a spell over heart, brain,
and senses, which never for a moment allowed her to cease thinking
of her husband. Every movement he made, every word he uttered, she
distinctly felt and heard.

The way grew unfamiliar; they were passing through a track of country,
wilder, and more peculiar than any Mrs. Harper had yet seen in
Dorsetshire--a road cut through furzy eminences, looking down on deep,
abrupt valleys, that might have been the bed of dried-up lakes or bays;
long heathery sweeps of undulating ground, with great stones lying here
and there; cultivation altogether ceasing--even sheep becoming rare; and
ever when they chanced to rise on higher ground, a sharp, salt, sea-wind
blowing, not a human being to be seen for miles.

"Here's the gate. I'll open it. Now we get into Anne Valery's property,"
said Harrie, as she leaped down and leape