Agnes Atheling was alone in old Miss Bridget’s parlour; it was a fervent day of July, and all the country lay in a hush and stillness of exceeding sunshine, which reduced all the common sounds of life, far and near, to a drowsy and languid hum—the midsummer’s luxurious voice. The little house was perfectly still. Mrs Atheling was at the Hall, Papa in Oxford, and Hannah, whose sole beatific duty it was to take care of the children, and who envied no one in the world save the new nurse to the new baby, had taken out Bell and Beau. The door was open in the fearless fashion and license of the country. Perhaps Susan was dozing in the kitchen, or on the sunny outside bench by the kitchen door. There was not a sound about the house save the deep dreamy hum of the bees among the roses—those roses which clustered thick round the old porch and on the wall. Agnes sat by the open window, in a very familiar old occupation, making a frock for little Bell, who was six years old now, and appreciated pretty things. Agnes was not quite so young as she used to be—four years, with a great many events in them, had enlarged the maiden mind, which still was as fresh as a child’s. She was changed otherwise: the ease which those only have who are used to the company of people of refinement, had added another charm to her natural grace. As she sat with her work on her knee, in her feminine attitude and occupation, making a meditative pause, bowing her head upon her hand, thinking of something, with those quiet walls of home around her—the open door, the open window, and no one else visible in the serene and peaceful house, she made, in her fair and thoughtful young womanhood, as sweet a type as one could desire of the serene and happy confidence of a quiet English home.

She did not observe any one passing; she was not thinking, perhaps, of any one hereabout who was like to pass—but she heard a step entering at the door. She scarcely looked up, thinking it some member of the family—scarcely moved even when the door of the parlour opened wider, and the step came in. Then she looked up—started up—let her work drop out of her hands, and, gazing with eagerness in the bronzed face of the stranger, uttered a wondering exclamation. He hastened to her, holding out his hand. “Mr Rivers?” cried Agnes, in extreme surprise and agitation—“is it you?”

What he said was some hasty faltering expressions of delight in seeing her, and they gazed at each other with their mutual “interest,” glad, yet constrained. “We have tried often to find out where you were,” said Agnes—“I mean Louis; he has been very anxious. Have you seen him? When did you come home?”

“I have seen no one save you.”

“But Louis has been very anxious,” said Agnes, with a little confusion. “We have all tried to discover where you were. Is it wrong to ask where you have been?”

But Lionel did not at all attend to her questions. He was less self-possessed than she was; he seemed to have only one idea at the present moment, so far as was visible, and that he simply expressed over again—“I am very glad—happy—to see you here and alone.”

“Oh!” said Agnes with a nervous tremor—“I—I was asking, Mr Rivers, where you had been?”

This time he began to attend to her. “I have been everywhere,” he said, “except where pleasure was. I have been on fields of battles—in places of wretchedness. I have come to tell you something—you only. Do you remember our conversation once by Badgeley Wood?”

“Yes.”

“You gave me a talisman, Agnes,” said the speaker, growing more excited; “I have carried it all over the world.”

“Well,” said Agnes as he paused. She looked at him very earnestly, without even a blush at the sound of her own name.

“Well—better than well!” cried Lionel; “wonderful—invincible—divine! I went to try your spell—I who trusted nothing—at the moment when everything had failed me—even you. I put yonder sublime Friend of yours to the experiment—I dared to do it! I took his name to the sorrowful, as you bade me. I cast out devils with his name, as the sorcerers tried to do. I put all the hope I could have in life upon the trial. Now I come to tell you the issue; it is fit that you should know.”

Agnes leaned forward towards him, listening eagerly; she could not quite tell what she expected—a confession of faith.

“I am a man of ambition,” said Lionel, turning in a moment from the high and solemn excitement of his former speech, with a sudden smile like a gleam of sunshine. “You remember my projects when I was heir of Winterbourne. You knew them, though I did not tell you; now I have found a cave in a wild mining district among a race of giants. I am Vicar of Botallach, among the Cornish men—have been for four-and-twenty hours—that is the end.”

Agnes had put out her hand to him in the first impulse of joy and congratulation; a second thought, more subtle, made her pause, and blush, and draw back. Lionel was not so foolish as to wait the end of this self-controversy. He left his seat, came to her side, took the hand firmly into his own, which she half gave, and half withdrew—did not blush, but grew pale, with the quiet concern of a man who was about deciding the happiness of his life. “The end, but the beginning too,” said Lionel, with a tremor in his voice. “Agnes hear me still—I have something more to say.”

She did not answer a word; she lifted her eyes to his face with one hurried, agitated momentary glance. Something more! but the whole tale was in the look. They did not know very well what words followed, and neither do we.

THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.