Henry rose to take his leave.  ’I should be glad to see Emily again at any other time,’ he said.  ’But it is best that I should go now.  My mind is disturbed, Agnes; I might say things to you, if I stayed here any longer, which—­which are better not said now.  I shall cross the Channel by the mail to-night, and see how a few weeks’ change will help me.’  He took her hand.  ‘Is there anything in the world that I can do for you?’ he asked very earnestly.  She thanked him, and tried to release her hand.  He held it with a tremulous lingering grasp.  ‘God bless you, Agnes!’ he said in faltering tones, with his eyes on the ground.  Her face flushed again, and the next instant turned paler than ever; she knew his heart as well as he knew it himself—­ she was too distressed to speak.  He lifted her hand to his lips, kissed it fervently, and, without looking at her again, left the room.  The nurse hobbled after him to the head of the stairs:  she had not forgotten the time when the younger brother had been the unsuccessful rival of the elder for the hand of Agnes.  ’Don’t be down-hearted, Master Henry,’ whispered the old woman, with the unscrupulous common sense of persons in the lower rank of life.  ’Try her again, when you come back!’

Left alone for a few moments, Agnes took a turn in the room, trying to compose herself.  She paused before a little water-colour drawing on the wall, which had belonged to her mother:  it was her own portrait when she was a child.  ‘How much happier we should be,’ she thought to herself sadly, ‘if we never grew up!’

The courier’s wife was shown in—­a little meek melancholy woman, with white eyelashes, and watery eyes, who curtseyed deferentially and was troubled with a small chronic cough.  Agnes shook hands with her kindly.  ‘Well, Emily, what can I do for you?’

The courier’s wife made rather a strange answer:  ’I’m afraid to tell you, Miss.’

’Is it such a very difficult favour to grant?  Sit down, and let me hear how you are going on.  Perhaps the petition will slip out while we are talking.  How does your husband behave to you?’

Emily’s light grey eyes looked more watery than ever.  She shook her head and sighed resignedly.  ’I have no positive complaint to make against him, Miss.  But I’m afraid he doesn’t care about me; and he seems to take no interest in his home—­ I may almost say he’s tired of his home.  It might be better for both of us, Miss, if he went travelling for a while—­ not to mention the money, which is beginning to be wanted sadly.’  She put her handkerchief to her eyes, and sighed again more resignedly than ever.

‘I don’t quite understand,’ said Agnes.  ’I thought your husband had an engagement to take some ladies to Switzerland and Italy?’

’That was his ill-luck, Miss.  One of the ladies fell ill—­ and the others wouldn’t go without her.  They paid him a month’s salary as compensation.  But they had engaged him for the autumn and winter—­ and the loss is serious.’