Agathas Husband | Page 4

an eyesore unto both. As it was, his modicum of talent made him a most pleasant man in his own sphere--the drawing-room.
"Really," whispered the good, corpulent Dr. Ianson, who had been laughing so much that he quite forgot dinner was behind time, "my dear Miss Bowen, your friend is the most amusing, witty, delightful person. It is quite a pleasure to have such a man at one's table."
"Quite a pleasure, indeed," echoed Mrs. Ianson, deeply thankful to anything or anybody that stood in the breach between herself, her husband, and the dilatory cook.
Agatha looked gratified and proud. Casting a shy glance towards where her friend was talking to Emma Thomycroft and Miss Ianson, she met the eye of the younger brother. It expressed such keen, though grave observance of her, that she felt her cheeks warm into the old, unbecoming, uncomfortable blush.
It was rather a satisfaction that, just then, they were summoned to dinner; Major Harper, in his half tender, half paternal manner, advancing to take her downstairs; which was his custom, when, as frequently happened, Agatha Bowen was the woman he liked best in the room. This was indeed his usual way in all societies, except when out of kindliness of heart he now and then made a temporary sacrifice in favour of some woman who he thought liked him best. Though even in this case, perhaps, he would not have erred, or felt that he erred, in offering his arm to Agatha.
She looked happy, as any young girl would, in receiving the attentions of a man whom all admired; and was quite contented to sit next to him, listening while he talked cheerfully and brilliantly, less for her personal, entertainment than that of the table in general. Which she thought, considering the dulness of the Ianson circle, and that even her own kind-hearted, long-known friend, Emma Thomycroft, was not the most intellectual woman in the world,--showed great good nature on the part of Major Harper.
Perhaps the most silent person at table was the younger brother, whose Christian name Agatha did not know. However, hearing the Major call him once or twice by an odd-sounding word, something like "Beynell" or "Ennell," she had the curiosity to inquire.
"Oh, it is N. L.--his initials; which I call him by, instead of the very ugly name his cruel godfathers and godmothers imposed upon him as a life-long martyrdom."
"What name is that?" asked Agatha, looking across at the luckless victim of nomenclature, who seemed to endure his woes with great equanimity.
He met her eye, and answered for himself, showing he had been listening to her all the time. "I am called Nathanael--it is an old family name--Nathanael Locke Harper."
"You don't look very like a Nathanael," observed his neighbour, Mrs. Thornycroft, doubtless wishing to be complimentary.
"I think he does," said Agatha, kindly, for she was struck by the infinitely sweet and "good" expression which the young man's face just then wore. "He looks like the Nathanael of Scripture, 'in whom there was no guile.'"
A pause--for the Iansons were those sort of religious people who think any Biblical allusions irreverent. But Major Harper said, heartily, "That's true!" and cordially, nay affectionately, pressed Agatha's hand. Nathanael slightly coloured, as if with pleasure, though he made no answer of any kind. He was evidently unused to bandy either jests or compliments.
If anything could be objected to in a young man so retiring and unobtrusive as he, it was a certain something the very opposite of his brother's cheerful frankness. His features, regular, delicate, and perfectly colourless; his hair long, straight, and of the palest brown, without any shadow of what painters would call a "warm tint," auburn or gold, running through it; his slow, quiet movements, rare speech, and a certain passive composure of aspect, altogether conveyed the impression of a nature which, if not positively repellant, was decidedly cold.
Agatha felt it, and though from the rule of opposites, this species of character awoke in her a spice of interest, yet was the interest of too faint and negative a kind to attract her more than momentarily.
In her own mind she set down Nathanael Harper as "a very odd sort of youth"--(a youth she still persisted in calling him)--and turned again to his brother.
They had dined late,--and the brief evening bade fair to pass as after-dinner evenings do. Arrived in the drawing-room, old Mrs. Hill went to sleep; Miss Ianson, a pale young woman, in delicate health, disappeared; Mrs. Ianson and Mrs. Thornycroft commenced a low-toned, harmless conversation, which was probably about "servants" and "babies." Agatha being at that age when domestic affairs are very uninteresting, and girlish romance has not yet ripened into the sweet and solemn instincts of motherhood, stole quietly aside, and did the very rude thing of taking up a book and beginning