Left alone for a few moments, Agnes took a turn in the room, trying to compose herself. She paused before a little watercolour 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.”
“I am sorry to hear it, Emily. Let us hope he will soon have another chance.”
“It’s not his turn, Miss, to be recommended when the next applications come to the couriers’ office. You see, there are so many of them out of employment just now. If he could be privately recommended—” She stopped, and left the unfinished sentence to speak for itself.
Agnes understood her directly. “You want my recommendation,” she rejoined. “Why couldn’t you say so at once?”
Emily blushed. “It would be such a chance for my husband,” she answered confusedly. “A letter, inquiring for a good courier (a six months’ engagement, Miss!) came to the office this morning. It’s another man’s turn to be chosen—and the secretary will recommend him. If my husband could only send his testimonials by the same post—with just a word in your name, Miss—it might turn the scale, as they say. A private recommendation between gentlefolks goes so far.” She stopped again, and sighed again, and looked down at the carpet, as if she had some private reason for feeling a little ashamed of herself.
Agnes began to be rather weary of the persistent tone of mystery in which her visitor spoke. “If you want my interest with any friend of mine,” she said, “why can’t you tell me the name?”
The courier’s wife began to cry. “I’m ashamed to tell you, Miss.”
For the first time, Agnes spoke sharply. “Nonsense, Emily! Tell me the name directly—or drop the subject—whichever you like best.”
Emily made a last desperate effort. She wrung her handkerchief hard in her lap, and let off the name as if she had been letting off a loaded gun:—“Lord Montbarry!”
Agnes rose and looked at her.
“You have disappointed me,” she said very quietly, but with a look which the courier’s wife had never seen in her face before. “Knowing what you know, you ought to be aware that it is impossible for me to communicate with Lord Montbarry. I always supposed you had some delicacy of feeling. I am sorry to find that I have been mistaken.”
Weak as she was, Emily had spirit enough to feel the reproof. She walked in her meek noiseless way to the door. “I beg your pardon, Miss. I am not quite so bad as you think me. But I beg your pardon, all the same.”
She opened the door. Agnes called her back. There was something in the woman’s apology that appealed irresistibly to her just and generous nature. “Come,” she said; “we must not part in this way. Let me not misunderstand you. What is it that you expected me to do?”
Emily was wise enough to answer this time without any reserve. “My husband will send his testimonials, Miss, to Lord Montbarry in Scotland. I only wanted you to let him say in his letter that his wife has been known to you since she was a child, and that you feel some little interest in his welfare on
