f her husband came like a
cloud between her and her mirth. No--she never could be really happy.

Nathanael was all day very quiet and abstracted. He did not romp with
his little nephews, and only smiled when Harrie teased him for this
unusual omission of avuncular privilege. Once, Agatha saw him sitting
with the youngest little girl fast asleep against his shoulder, he
looking over her baby-curls with a pensive, troubled eye, an eye which
seemed gazing into the future to find there--nothing! A strange thrill
quivered through Agatha's heart to see him so sitting with that child.

After tea Mrs. Dugdale proposed turning out of doors all the masculine
half of the family, except the infant Brian, before whom loomed the
terrific prospect of bed. So off they started. Gus being seen to snatch
frantically at Pa's hand, and Fred, sublime in his first jacket, walking
alongside with an air and grace worthy of the uncle whose name he bore.

"There they go," cried Mrs. Dugdale, looking fondly after them. "Not
bad-looking lads either, considering that Pa isn't exactly a beauty. But
pshaw! what does that signify? I think my Duke's the very nicest face I
know. Don't you, Agatha?"

Agatha warmly acquiesced. She had entirely got over the first impression
of Duke's plainness. And moreover she was learning day by day that
mysterious secret which individualises one face out of all the world,
and makes its very deficiencies more lovely than any other features'
charm. She could fully sympathise with Harrie's harmless weakness, and
agreed--looking at Brian, who in fact strongly resembled his father,
angelicised into childhood, keeping the same beautiful expression, which
needed no change--that if Mr. Dugdale's sons grew up like him in all
points, the world would be none the worse, but a great deal the better.

Thus talking--which little Brian seemed actually to understand, for he
stood at her knee gazing up with miraculously merry eyes--Agatha watched
her sister-in-law's Sunday duty, religiously performed, of putting the
younger two to bed, while the nurses went to church, or took walks with
their sweethearts. For, as Harrie sagely observed, "'the maidens' as
we call them in Dorsetshire, 'the maidens' will fall in love as well as
we."

So chattering merrily--while she dashed water over Miss Baby's white,
round limbs, and let Brian caper wildly about the nursery, clad in all
sorts of half-costumes, or no costume at all--Mrs. Dugdale
initi