my desire. Do not say I wish to trouble him. I
would sooner beg than be a trouble to him."

"Why are you so delicate?"

"It is for my own sake; I wish him not to hate me."

"Then, thus you may secure his respect. I will write to him, and let him
know all the circumstances of your case. I will plead for his compassion
on his child, but assure him that no conduct of his will ever induce you
to declare (except only to me, who knew of your previous acquaintance)
who is the father."

To this she consented; but when Henry offered to take from her the
infant, and carry him to the nurse he had engaged, to this she would not
consent.

"Do you mean, then, to acknowledge him yours?" Henry asked.

"Nothing shall force me to part from him again. I will keep him, and let
my neighbours judge of me as they please."

Here Henry caught at a hope he feared to name before. "You will then
have no objection," said he, "to clear an unhappy girl to a few friends,
with whom her character has suffered by becoming, at my request, his
nurse?"

"I will clear any one, so that I do not accuse the father."

"You give me leave, then, in your name, to tell the whole story to some
particular friends, my cousin William's part in it alone excepted?"

"I do."

Henry now exclaimed, "God bless you!" with greater fervour than when he
spoke it before; and he now hoped the night was nearly gone, that the
time might be so much the shorter before Rebecca should be reinstated in
the esteem of her father, and of all those who had misjudged her.

"God bless _you_!" said Agnes, still more fervently, as she walked with
unguided steps towards her home; for her eyes never wandered from the
precious object which caused her unexpected return.

CHAPTER XXXI.

Henry rose early in the morning, and flew to the curate's house, with
more than even his usual thirst of justice, to clear injured innocence,
to redeem from shame her whom he loved. With eager haste he told that he
had found the mother, whose fall from virtue Rebecca, overcome by
confusion and threats, had taken on herself.

Rebecca rejoiced, but her sisters shook their heads, and even the father
seemed to doubt.

Confident in the truth of his story, Henry persisted so boldly in his
affirmations, that if Mr. Rymer did not entirely believe what he said, he
secretly hoped that the dean and other people might; therefore he began
to imagine he could possibly cast from _his_ family the pre