g
thoughtfully at the fire.

Thoughtfully, for I could not be here once more, and so near Agnes,
without the revival of those regrets with which I had so long been
occupied. Softened regrets they might be, teaching me what I had failed
to learn when my younger life was all before me, but not the less
regrets. 'Oh, Trot,' I seemed to hear my aunt say once more; and I
understood her better now--'Blind, blind, blind!'

We both kept silence for some minutes. When I raised my eyes, I found
that she was steadily observant of me. Perhaps she had followed the
current of my mind; for it seemed to me an easy one to track now, wilful
as it had been once.

'You will find her father a white-haired old man,' said my aunt, 'though
a better man in all other respects--a reclaimed man. Neither will you
find him measuring all human interests, and joys, and sorrows, with his
one poor little inch-rule now. Trust me, child, such things must shrink
very much, before they can be measured off in that way.'

'Indeed they must,' said I.

'You will find her,' pursued my aunt, 'as good, as beautiful, as
earnest, as disinterested, as she has always been. If I knew higher
praise, Trot, I would bestow it on her.'

There was no higher praise for her; no higher reproach for me. Oh, how
had I strayed so far away!

'If she trains the young girls whom she has about her, to be like
herself,' said my aunt, earnest even to the filling of her eyes with
tears, 'Heaven knows, her life will be well employed! Useful and happy,
as she said that day! How could she be otherwise than useful and happy!'

'Has Agnes any--' I was thinking aloud, rather than speaking.

'Well? Hey? Any what?' said my aunt, sharply.

'Any lover,' said I.

'A score,' cried my aunt, with a kind of indignant pride. 'She might
have married twenty times, my dear, since you have been gone!'

'No doubt,' said I. 'No doubt. But has she any lover who is worthy of
her? Agnes could care for no other.'

My aunt sat musing for a little while, with her chin upon her hand.
Slowly raising her eyes to mine, she said:

'I suspect she has an attachment, Trot.'

'A prosperous one?' said I.

'Trot,' returned my aunt gravely, 'I can't say. I have no right to tell
you even so much. She has never confided it to me, but I suspect it.'

She looked so attentively and anxiously at me (I even saw her tremble),
that I felt now, more than ever, that she had followed my late thoughts.
I summoned all