'Do you think she is mad?' Agnes asked.
'I think she is simply wicked. False, superstitious, inveterately cruel--but not mad. I believe her main motive in coming here was to enjoy the luxury of frightening you.'
'She has frightened me. I am ashamed to own it--but so it is.'
Henry looked at her, hesitated for a moment, and seated himself on the sofa by her side.
'I am very anxious about you, Agnes,' he said. 'But for the fortunate chance which led me to call here to-day--who knows what that vile woman might not have said or done, if she had found you alone?
My dear, you are leading a sadly unprotected solitary life.
I don't like to think of it; I want to see it changed--especially after what has happened to-day. No! no! it is useless to tell me that you have your old nurse. She is too old; she is not in your rank of life--there is no sufficient protection in the companionship of such a person for a lady in your position. Don't mistake me, Agnes! what I say, I say in the sincerity of my devotion to you.'
He paused, and took her hand. She made a feeble effort to withdraw it--and yielded. 'Will the day never come,' he pleaded, 'when the privilege of protecting you may be mine? when you will be the pride and joy of my life, as long as my life lasts?' He pressed her hand gently.
She made no reply. The colour came and went on her face; her eyes were turned away from him. 'Have I been so unhappy as to offend you?' he asked.
She answered that--she said, almost in a whisper, 'No.'
'Have I distressed you?'
'You have made me think of the sad days that are gone.' She said no more;she only tried to withdraw her hand from his for the second time.
He still held it; he lifted it to his lips.
'Can I never make you think of other days than those--of the happier days to come? Or, if you must think of the time that is passed, can you not look back to the time when I first loved you?'
She sighed as he put the question. 'Spare me Henry,' she answered sadly.
'Say no more!'
The colour again rose in her cheeks; her hand trembled in his.
She looked lovely, with her eyes cast down and her bosom heaving gently.
At that moment he would have given everything he had in the world to take her in his arms and kiss her. Some mysterious sympathy, passing from his hand to hers, seemed to tell her what was in his mind.
She snatched her hand away, and suddenly looked up at him.
The tears were in her eyes. She said nothing; she let her eyes speak for her. They warned him--without anger, without unkindness--but still they warned him to press her no further that day.
'Only tell me that I am forgiven,' he said, as he rose from the sofa.
'Yes,' she answered quietly, 'you are forgiven.'
'I have not lowered myself in your estimation, Agnes?'
'Oh, no!'
'Do you wish me to leave you?'
She rose, in her turn, from the sofa, and walked to her writing-table before she replied. The unfinished letter which she had been writing when Lady Montbarry interrupted her, lay open on the blotting-book.
As she looked at the letter, and then looked at Henry, the smile that charmed everybody showed itself in her face.
'You must not go just yet,' she said: 'I have something to tell you.
I hardly know how to express it. The shortest way perhaps will be to let you find it out for yourself. You have been speaking of my lonely unprotected life here. It is not a very happy life, Henry--I own that.'
She paused, observing the growing anxiety of his expression as he looked at her, with a shy satisfaction that perplexed him.
'Do you know that I have anticipated your idea?' she went on.
'I am going to make a great change in my life--if your brother Stephen and his wife will only consent to it.' She opened the desk of the writing-table while she spoke, took a letter out, and handed it to Henry.
He received it from her mechanically. Vague doubts, which he hardly understood himself, kept him silent. It was impossible that the 'change in her life' of which she had spoken could mean that she was about to be married--and yet he was conscious of a perfectly unreasonable reluctance to open the letter. Their eyes met; she smiled again.
'Look at the address,' she said. 'You ought to know the handwriting--but I dare say you don't.'
He looked at the address. It was in the large, irregular, uncertain writing of a child. He opened the letter instantly.
'Dear Aunt Agnes,--Our governess is going away. She has had money left to her, and a house of her own. We have had cake and wine to drink her health. You promised to be our governess if we wanted another. We want you. Mamma knows nothing about this.
Please come before Mamma can get another governess. Your loving Lucy, who writes this. Clara and Blanche have tried to write too.
But they are too young to do it. They blot the paper.'
'Your eldest niece,' Agnes explained, as Henry looked at her in amazement.
'The children used to call me aunt when I was staying with their mother in Ireland, in the autumn. The three girls were my inseparable companions--they are the most charming children I know.
It is quite true that I offered to be their governess, if they ever wanted one, on the day when I left them to return to London.
I was writing to propose it to their mother, just before you came.'
'Not seriously!' Henry exclaimed.
Agnes placed her unfinished letter in his hand. Enough of it had been written to show that she did seriously propose to enter the household of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Westwick as governess to their children!
Henry's bewilderment was not to be expressed in words.
'They won't believe you are in earnest,' he said.
'Why not?' Agnes asked quietly.
'You are my brother Stephen's cousin; you are his wife's old friend.'
'All the more reason, Henry, for trusting me with the charge of their children.'
'But you are their equal; you are not obliged to get your living by teaching. There is something absurd in your entering their service as a governess!'
