ely, "I once strove to keep him from you."

She looked annoyed, and cast a hurried glance toward the place where
Mrs. Coe had been sitting; but there was now only an empty chair there.
The widow had purposely withdrawn herself, in accordance with Richard's
wish. Agnes could scarcely leave the sick man without attendance.

"When I say, 'keep him from you,'" continued Richard, "I mean that,
being lonely and friendless (as you see I am but for you three), the
society of this bright boy was very dear to me, and I selfishly strove
to secure it when he would fain have been elsewhere. I needed, as you
may well imagine, authority to back me in such efforts, but, unhappily
for him, I possessed its aid. He now resents, and very naturally, the
restraint which my companionship once imposed upon him, and sets down to
my account the estrangement which he so bitterly rues. An old man's
friendship is of no great worth at any time; but weighed in the balance
against a woman's love--"

"Sir!" interrupted Agnes, with indignation.

"Pardon me," continued Richard, gently; "I see you do not love him. I am
deeply grieved, for the sake of this poor lad, who is as devoted to you
as ever, to find it so, and to feel that it was in part my fault. I will
ask him to forgive me if he can."

"Nay, Mr. Balfour, I beseech you, don't do that," cried Agnes, with
crimson cheeks.

"As you please," murmured he, gravely. "But, remember, a few days hence,
or perhaps a few hours, and I may be beyond his forgiveness. It will
then rest with you, young lady, to clear my memory. You are not angry
with me--you can not be vexed with a dying man."

"No, no." She was sobbing violently; her heart was touched, not only by
his own condition, as she would have had him believe, but by these
confidences respecting Charley. There is nothing more dear to a young
girl than the testimony of another man to her lover's fealty; the
witness himself is even guerdoned with some payment of the rich store he
bears; and from that moment Balfour was not only forgiven by Agnes, but
even beloved by her.

CHAPTER XLIX.

REST AT LAST.

That the termination of Richard's malady would be fatal did not from the
first admit of doubt, but he lingered on beyond all expectation. The
spring came on and found him yet alive at Gethin. He was never moved
from the room to which he had been carried after his mischance--the same
which had been his bedroom in the old times, when he was fu