‘I owe it to your pure friendship for me, Trotwood—which, indeed, I do not doubt—to tell you, you are mistaken. I can do no more. If I have sometimes, in the course of years, wanted help and counsel, they have come to me. If I have sometimes been unhappy, the feeling has passed away. If I have ever had a burden on my heart, it has been lightened for me. If I have any secret, it is—no new one; and is—not what you suppose. I cannot reveal it, or divide it. It has long been mine, and must remain mine.’
‘Agnes! Stay! A moment!’
She was going away, but I detained her. I clasped my arm about her waist. ‘In the course of years!’ ‘It is not a new one!’ New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing.
‘Dearest Agnes! Whom I so respect and honour—whom I so devotedly love! When I came here today, I thought that nothing could have wrested this confession from me. I thought I could have kept it in my bosom all our lives, till we were old. But, Agnes, if I have indeed any new-born hope that I may ever call you something more than Sister, widely different from Sister!—’
Her tears fell fast; but they were not like those she had lately shed, and I saw my hope brighten in them.
‘Agnes! Ever my guide, and best support! If you had been more mindful of yourself, and less of me, when we grew up here together, I think my heedless fancy never would have wandered from you. But you were so much better than I, so necessary to me in every boyish hope and disappointment, that to have you to confide in, and rely upon in everything, became a second nature, supplanting for the time the first and greater one of loving you as I do!’
Still weeping, but not sadly—joyfully! And clasped in my arms as she had never been, as I had thought she never was to be!
‘When I loved Dora—fondly, Agnes, as you know—’
‘Yes!’ she cried, earnestly. ‘I am glad to know it!’
‘When I loved her—even then, my love would have been incomplete, without your sympathy. I had it, and it was perfected. And when I lost her, Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!’