wards, the appointed
time was exceeded by a full quarter of an hour, according to the
clock of St. Andrew's, Holborn, before I could muster up sufficient
desperation to pull the private bell-handle let into the left-hand
door-post of Mr. Waterbrook's house.

The professional business of Mr. Waterbrook's establishment was done on
the ground-floor, and the genteel business (of which there was a good
deal) in the upper part of the building. I was shown into a pretty but
rather close drawing-room, and there sat Agnes, netting a purse.

She looked so quiet and good, and reminded me so strongly of my airy
fresh school days at Canterbury, and the sodden, smoky, stupid wretch
I had been the other night, that, nobody being by, I yielded to my
self-reproach and shame, and--in short, made a fool of myself. I cannot
deny that I shed tears. To this hour I am undecided whether it was upon
the whole the wisest thing I could have done, or the most ridiculous.

'If it had been anyone but you, Agnes,' said I, turning away my head, 'I
should not have minded it half so much. But that it should have been you
who saw me! I almost wish I had been dead, first.'

She put her hand--its touch was like no other hand--upon my arm for a
moment; and I felt so befriended and comforted, that I could not help
moving it to my lips, and gratefully kissing it.

'Sit down,' said Agnes, cheerfully. 'Don't be unhappy, Trotwood. If you
cannot confidently trust me, whom will you trust?'

'Ah, Agnes!' I returned. 'You are my good Angel!'

She smiled rather sadly, I thought, and shook her head.

'Yes, Agnes, my good Angel! Always my good Angel!'

'If I were, indeed, Trotwood,' she returned, 'there is one thing that I
should set my heart on very much.'

I looked at her inquiringly; but already with a foreknowledge of her
meaning.

'On warning you,' said Agnes, with a steady glance, 'against your bad
Angel.'

'My dear Agnes,' I began, 'if you mean Steerforth--'

'I do, Trotwood,' she returned. 'Then, Agnes, you wrong him very much.
He my bad Angel, or anyone's! He, anything but a guide, a support, and
a friend to me! My dear Agnes! Now, is it not unjust, and unlike you, to
judge him from what you saw of me the other night?'

'I do not judge him from what I saw of you the other night,' she quietly
replied.

'From what, then?'

'From many things--trifles in themselves, but they do not seem to me to
be so, when they are put together. I judge him, p