“No. It’s because you are like no one else. You are so good, and so sweet-tempered. You have such a gentle nature, and you are always right.”

“You talk,” said Agnes, breaking into a pleasant laugh, as she sat at work, “as if I were the late Miss Larkins.”

“Come! It’s not fair to abuse my confidence,” I answered, reddening at the recollection of my blue enslaver. “But I shall confide in you, just the same, Agnes. I can never grow out of that. Whenever I fall into trouble, or fall in love, I shall always tell you, if you’ll let me—even when I come to fall in love in earnest.”

“Why, you have always been in earnest!” said Agnes, laughing again.

“Oh! that was as a child, or a school-boy,” said I, laughing in my turn, not without being a little shamefaced. “Times are altering now, and I suppose I shall be in a terrible state of earnestness one day or other. My wonder is, that you are not in earnest yourself by this time, Agnes.”

Agnes laughed again, and shook her head.

“Oh, I know you are not!” said I, “because if you had been, you would have told me. Or at least—” for I saw a faint blush in her face, “you would have let me find it out for myself. But there is no one that I know of, who deserves to love you, Agnes. Some one of a nobler character, and more worthy altogether than any one I have ever seen here, must rise up, before I give my consent. In the time to come, I shall have a wary eye on all admirers, and shall exact a great deal from the successful one, I assure you.”

We had gone on, so far, in a mixture of confidential jest and earnest, that had long grown naturally out of our familiar relations, begun as mere children. But Agnes, now suddenly lifting up her eyes to mine, and speaking in a different manner, said—

“Trotwood, there is something that I want to ask you, and that I may not have another opportunity of asking for a long time, perhaps—something I would ask, I think, of no one else. Have you observed any gradual alteration in Papa?”

I had observed it, and had often wondered whether she had too. I must have shown as much, now, in my face; for her eyes were in a moment cast down, and I saw tears in them.

“Tell me what it is,” she said, in a low voice.

“I think—shall I be quite plain, Agnes, liking him so much?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I think he does himself no good by the habit that has increased upon him since I first came here. He is often very nervous—or I fancy so.”

“It is not fancy,” said Agnes, shaking her head.

“His hand trembles, his speech is not plain, and his eyes look wild. I have remarked that at those times, when he is least like himself, he is most certain to be wanted on some business.”

“By Uriah?” said Agnes.

“Yes; and the sense of being unfit for it, or of not having understood it, or of having shown his condition in spite of himself, seems to make him so uneasy, that next day he is worse, and next day worse, and so he becomes jaded and haggard. Do not be alarmed by what I say, Agnes, but in this state I saw him, only the other evening, lay down his head upon his desk, and shed tears like a child.”


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