“I don’t know how it is, Agnes; I seem to want some faculty of mind that I ought to have. You were so much in the habit of thinking for me, in the happy old days here, and I came so naturally to you for counsel and support, that I really think I have missed acquiring it!”

“And what is it?” said Agnes, cheerfully.

“I don’t know what to call it,” I replied. “I think I am earnest and persevering?”

“I am sure of it,” said Agnes.

“And patient, Agnes?” I inquired, with a little hesitation.

“Yes,” returned Agnes, laughing. “Pretty well.”

“And yet,” said I, “I get so miserable and worried, and am so unsteady and irresolute in my power of assuring myself, that I know I must want—shall I call it—reliance, of some kind?”

“Call it so, if you will,” said Agnes.

“Well!” I returned. “See here! You come to London, I rely on you, and I have an object and a course at once. I am driven out of it, I come here, and in a moment I feel an altered person. The circumstances that distressed me are not changed, since I came into this room; but an influence comes over me in that short interval that alters me, oh, how much for the better! What is it? What is your secret, Agnes?”

Her head was bent down, looking at the fire.

“It’s the old story,” said I. “Don’t laugh, when I say it was always the same in little things as it is in greater ones. My old troubles were nonsense, and now they are serious; but whenever I have gone away from my adopted sister—”

Agnes looked up—with such a heavenly face!—and gave me her hand, which I kissed.

“Whenever I have not had you, Agnes, to advise and approve in the beginning, I have seemed to go wild, and to get into all sorts of difficulty. When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come to peace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and find such a blessed sense of rest!”

I felt so deeply what I said, it affected me so sincerely, that my voice failed, and I covered my face with my hand, and broke into tears. I write the truth. Whatever contradictions and inconsistencies there were within me, as there are within so many of us; whatever might have been so different, and so much better; whatever I had done, in which I had perversely wandered away from the voice of my own heart; I knew nothing of. I only knew that I was fervently in earnest, when I felt the rest and peace of having Agnes near me.

In her placid sisterly manner; with her beaming eyes; with her tender voice; and with that sweet composure, which had long ago made the house that held her quite a sacred place to me; she soon won me from this weakness, and led me on to tell all that had happened since our last meeting.

“And there is not another word to tell, Agnes,” said I, when I had made an end of my confidence. “Now, my reliance is on you.”

“But it must not be on me, Trotwood,” returned Agnes, with a pleasant smile. “It must be on some one else.”

“On Dora?” said I.

“Assuredly.”