"And you refused him, Agnes!"
"And I refused him, Hubert."
"Oh! had I known this earlier, what misery should I have been spared!" cried Colonel Hubert. "You know not, you could not know all I have suffered, Agnes ... yet surely, dearest! when last we spoke together, it was but yesterday, in this very room, you must then have guessed the cause of the dreadful restraint that kept us asunder."
"There was no need of guessing then," replied Agnes, smiling, "for you told me so distinctly."
"Then why not on the instant remove the load from my heart?... were you quite incapable of feeling how galling it must have been to me?"
"I'll tell you how that came to pass," said Agnes, rising.... "Do you sit still there, as I did yesterday, and say, 'Let me then confess to you, Colonel Hubert,' ... and then I will answer thus," ... and raising her hand, as if to stop his speech, she added, mimicking his impatient tone,
"'Confess nothing, Miss Willoughby, to me!'... And then you told me you had written to him, and when I exclaimed, with some degree of dismay at the idea of your having written to recall him, you again interrupted me by saying that you would do it again ... and then my aunt came, and so we parted.... Then whose fault was it that I did not tell you?"
"My own, Agnes, it was my own; and alas!... I did not suffer for it alone.... How wretched you must have been made by my vehemence!... But you have forgiven me, and all this must be forgotten for ever.... There is, however, one subject on which I would willingly ask a few more questions—these, I hope, you will answer, Agnes?"
"Yes!" she replied, gaily, "you may hope for an answer to all your questions ... provided, that just when I am about to speak, you do not raise your arm thus, in order to prevent me."
"I will do my utmost to avoid it," he replied, "and for the greater security will place the offending arm thus," ... throwing it round her; "and now tell me, Agnes, why it was that you would not accept Frederick Stephenson?"