to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished. The
very years she spoke of, were realities now, for my correction; and
would have been, one day, a little later perhaps, though we had parted
in our earliest folly. I endeavoured to convert what might have been
between myself and Agnes, into a means of making me more self-denying,
more resolved, more conscious of myself, and my defects and errors.
Thus, through the reflection that it might have been, I arrived at the
conviction that it could never be.

These, with their perplexities and inconsistencies, were the shifting
quicksands of my mind, from the time of my departure to the time of my
return home, three years afterwards. Three years had elapsed since the
sailing of the emigrant ship; when, at that same hour of sunset, and in
the same place, I stood on the deck of the packet vessel that brought me
home, looking on the rosy water where I had seen the image of that ship
reflected.

Three years. Long in the aggregate, though short as they went by. And
home was very dear to me, and Agnes too--but she was not mine--she was
never to be mine. She might have been, but that was past!

CHAPTER 59. RETURN

I landed in London on a wintry autumn evening. It was dark and raining,
and I saw more fog and mud in a minute than I had seen in a year. I
walked from the Custom House to the Monument before I found a coach;
and although the very house-fronts, looking on the swollen gutters, were
like old friends to me, I could not but admit that they were very dingy
friends.

I have often remarked--I suppose everybody has--that one's going away
from a familiar place, would seem to be the signal for change in it.
As I looked out of the coach window, and observed that an old house on
Fish-street Hill, which had stood untouched by painter, carpenter, or
bricklayer, for a century, had been pulled down in my absence; and that
a neighbouring street, of time-honoured insalubrity and inconvenience,
was being drained and widened; I half expected to find St. Paul's
Cathedral looking older.

For some changes in the fortunes of my friends, I was prepared. My aunt
had long been re-established at Dover, and Traddles had begun to get
into some little practice at the Bar, in the very first term after my
departure. He had chambers in Gray's Inn, now; and had told me, in his
last letters, that he was not without hopes of being soon united to the
dearest girl in the world.

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