rs. Harper, we may safely say that his determination will not
last. A mere fit of misanthropy after rather too much gaiety. In such
a pleasant fellow as Frederick Harper we must excuse a few broken
resolutions."

"We ought," said Anne Valery, with that rare gentleness which makes men
listen to a woman even when she "preaches." "It is a very hard trial for
any one to be thrown into the world with so many gifts as Major Harper.
A man whom all men like, and not a few women are prone to love, goes
through an ordeal so fierce, that if he withstand it he is one of the
greatest heroes on earth. If he fall"--and Anne lowered her voice so
that Agatha could scarcely hear, though she felt sure Nathanael did--"if
he fall, we ought, through all the wrong, clearly to discern the
temptation."

It was a new doctrine, the last Agatha would have expected to hear on
the lips of such a sternly good woman as she had painted Miss Valery.
She said so, adding, with her usual plainness, "I thought, somehow, that
you did not like Major Harper?"

"Nay, we were young together. But hush, my dear, your husband is
speaking."

He was saying, with quite an altered expression, something about "my
brother Frederick." But after that mention Major Harper's name died out
of the conversation, as out of Agatha's memory. Alas, not the unfrequent
fate of the Major Harpers of society--meteors, never thought of but
while they are shining, and forgotten as soon as they have burnt
themselves out.

By this time the two or three stray visitors--gentlemen-farmers, Anne's
tenants, as Mrs. Dugdale whispered--had disappeared, and Mr. Trenchard
was the sole stranger left in the drawing-room. Miss Valery did the
honours of her house with a remarkably simple grace.

"I give no state dinner parties," she said, smiling, to Mr. Trenchard.
"It is a whim of mine that I never could see the use of friends meeting
together merely to eat and drink, or of offering them more and richer
fare than is customary or necessary. But if you will stay and dine with
me, and with these my own people, country fashion, even though you have
been a ten years' resident in London"--

"But have never forgotten Dorset, and good Dorset ways," said the old
gentleman, as he bowed over the hostess's hand. Then, obeying Anne's
signal, he offered his arm to Mrs. Harper to lead her in to dinner;--the
innocent daylight dinner, with real China-roses looking in at the
window, and an energetic autumn-robi