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 womanwhoever 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

sion-scarcely meant to pass he inaudible to all save him:

"Oh, why-why did I marry!

The moment after, she felt ho was, and would have atoned; bu per had moved quickly from her si beth called him; he seemed no Anne, closing her book, addressed "Are you come to talk with us, your wife away ?"

"Neither, for both might be un he said, bitterly. But recovering "Nay, Anne, I came for you.

wishes to see you.

I can urge. You must come dow with him, or I do not know w done."

Agatha had until now forg her husband had intended after tell his father his plans conc stewardship. It had been apparent task than he thought, to strive v

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, selfexistent 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 that question involved so much, both of what had been, and what was yet to come, that Agatha dared not ponder

over it.

"Mrs. Harper! Mrs. Harper!" She mused no longer, but hurried on after the Dugdales.

It was not to point out the Castle that Harrie had been so vociferous, but to show a

place which she evidently deemed far more interesting.

"Do you see that white house far among the trees? That's where my Duke was born. He lived there in peace and quietness till he got acquainted with Uncle Brian, and came to Kingcombe Holm and fell in love with me."

"How did he do it? I want to know what is the fashion of such things in Dorset." "How did Duke fall in love with me? Really I can't tell. I was fifteen or soa mere baby! He first gave me a doll, and then he wanted to marry me!"

"But how did he make love, or 'propose,' as they call it?" persisted Agatha, to whom the idea of Marmaduke Dugdale in that character was irresistibly funny.

"Make love? Propose? Bless you, my dear, he never did either! Somehow it all