the resolutions I had made, in all those many days and
nights, and all those many conflicts of my heart.

'If it should be so,' I began, 'and I hope it is-'

'I don't know that it is,' said my aunt curtly. 'You must not be ruled
by my suspicions. You must keep them secret. They are very slight,
perhaps. I have no right to speak.'

'If it should be so,' I repeated, 'Agnes will tell me at her own good
time. A sister to whom I have confided so much, aunt, will not be
reluctant to confide in me.'

My aunt withdrew her eyes from mine, as slowly as she had turned them
upon me; and covered them thoughtfully with her hand. By and by she
put her other hand on my shoulder; and so we both sat, looking into the
past, without saying another word, until we parted for the night.

I rode away, early in the morning, for the scene of my old school-days.
I cannot say that I was yet quite happy, in the hope that I was gaining
a victory over myself; even in the prospect of so soon looking on her
face again.

The well-remembered ground was soon traversed, and I came into the quiet
streets, where every stone was a boy's book to me. I went on foot to the
old house, and went away with a heart too full to enter. I returned; and
looking, as I passed, through the low window of the turret-room where
first Uriah Heep, and afterwards Mr. Micawber, had been wont to sit,
saw that it was a little parlour now, and that there was no office.
Otherwise the staid old house was, as to its cleanliness and order,
still just as it had been when I first saw it. I requested the new maid
who admitted me, to tell Miss Wickfield that a gentleman who waited on
her from a friend abroad, was there; and I was shown up the grave old
staircase (cautioned of the steps I knew so well), into the unchanged
drawing-room. The books that Agnes and I had read together, were on
their shelves; and the desk where I had laboured at my lessons, many
a night, stood yet at the same old corner of the table. All the little
changes that had crept in when the Heeps were there, were changed again.
Everything was as it used to be, in the happy time.

I stood in a window, and looked across the ancient street at the
opposite houses, recalling how I had watched them on wet afternoons,
when I first came there; and how I had used to speculate about the
people who appeared at any of the windows, and had followed them with my
eyes up and down stairs, while women went clicking along the pavemen