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"I don't like leaving them so long under the mistake," answered Agar, half yielding to authoritative persuasion, half tempted by ambition and a love of adventure. "I don't like it, General. The straight thing would be to telegraph home at once." In the wavering smile that crossed the dark face there was suggested a fine contempt for the straight thing unaccompanied by some tangible advantage.
The event was duly announced in the leading newspapers, and in the course of a few days a copy of the Times containing the insertion started eastward to meet Seymour Michael on his way home from India. Anna Agar came home to Stagholme to begin her new life; for which peaceful groove of existence she was by the way totally unfitted; for she had breathed the fatal air of Clapham since her birth.
He was Jem Agar, and the family name seemed somehow to belong exclusively to his father still, although that thorough old sportsman had lain for three years and more beneath the quiet turf of the little churchyard within his own park gates. As he pulled up at the door this was thrown open, and within its frame of light he saw the gracious form of his stepmother waiting to welcome him.
Jack Agar had died at thirty, leaving his wife and child totally unprovided for but for the little annuity that had sufficed for dress in the far-off salad days, and that now must be made to maintain them. Olive was sent to a cheap boarding-school, where she proved herself a fool at arithmetic; history, very good; conduct, fair; according to her reports. She was not happy there.
Already in the criminal courts we are beginning to hear of men and women who do not feel competent to keep the law. There were many laws of social procedure and a few of schoolboy honour which Arthur Agar felt to be beyond him, and he considered that in making confession he was acquiring a right to absolution.
All this while Arthur was lying back in the chair, white and lifeless. His eyes were open, he breathed regularly, but he heard nothing that was said, nor saw anything before his eyes. "Then," said Mrs. Agar, "that was a murder?"
Agar Ellis, but as the ministry showed no desire to encourage this particular historical painter, he passed through the Bankruptcy Court, and returned to his family on the 20th of July. During his period of detention, George IV. had died, and Haydon has the following comment on the event: 'Thus died as thoroughbred an Englishman as ever existed in this country.
Arthur asked me to marry him. I quite appreciated the honour, but I declined it." "Yes, but why? Surely you didn't mean it?" "I did mean it." "Well," explained Mrs. Agar, with a little toss of the head, "I am sure I cannot see what more you want. There are many girls who would be glad to be mistress of Stagholme."
To others he was held up by what is called a Representative Press as a second Crichton. And all this because he was dead. Such is glory. All unconscious of these honours, honest Jem Agar sat in his little tent, nibbling the end of his penholder the gift, by the way, of his father and wishing that he had bought a Letts's diary with six days in a page instead of three. Well waited is well done.
Then suddenly comes a day when a pain makes itself felt a dumb, little creeping pain, which may mean nothing. We sit down and, so to speak, feel ourselves. Before long all doubt goes. We have it. The world darkens, and behold we are in the ranks of those upon whom we looked a little while back with a semi-indifferent pity. It was thus with Mrs. Agar.
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