"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. O, 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 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
