With Wolfe in Canada: The Winning of a Continent

by G. A. Henty

"Yes," the sergeant said. "I have learned that I have misread you. Had it not been so, I should have brought the child to you long ago--should never have taken her away, indeed. Perhaps we have both misjudged each other."

"I fear that we have," the squire said, remembering the letters he wrote to his son, in his anger, denouncing the sergeant in violent language.

"It does not matter, now," the sergeant went on quietly; "but, as I do not wish Aggie ever to come to think ill of me, in the future, it is better to set it right.

"When I left the army, I had saved enough money to furnish a house, and I took one at Southampton, and set up taking lodgers there. I had my pension, and lived well until my wife died--a year before your son came down, from London, with another gentleman, and took my rooms. My daughter was seventeen when her mother died, and she took to managing the house. I was careful of her, and gave her orders that, on no account, was she ever to go into the lodgers' rooms. I waited on them, myself.

"How your son first saw her, and got to speak to her, I don't know; but I am not surprised that, when he did, he loved her, for there was no prettier or sweeter girl in Hampshire. They took the rooms, first, only for a fortnight, then the other gentleman went away, and your son stayed on.

"One day--it came upon me like a thunderbolt--your son told me he wanted to marry my Agnes. I was angry, at first. Angry, because it had been done behind my back, and because I had been deceived. I said as much; but your son assured me that he had never spoken to her in the house, but had met her when she went out for her walks. Still, it was wrong, and I told him so, and I told her so, though, in my heart, I did not altogether blame them; for young people will be young people, and, as he had acted honourably in coming to me at once, I let that pass.

"But, squire, though but a sergeant in His Majesty's service, I had my pride as you had yours, and I told him, at once, that I would not give my consent to my daughter's marrying him, until you had given yours; and that he must leave the house at once, and not see Agnes again, until he came with your written consent to show me.

"He went away at once. After a time, he began to write to me, urging me to change my decision; and from this, although he never said so, I was sure that you had refused to sanction his marriage. However, I stuck to what I had said, though it was hard for me to do so, with my child growing thin and pale before my eyes, with all her bright happiness gone.

"So it went on, for three months, and then one morning she was gone, and I found a letter on her table for me, saying that she had been married to him a week before, when she went out, as I thought, to spend the day with a friend. She begged and prayed me to forgive her, and said how miserable she had been, and that she could not say no to her lover's pleadings.

"I wrote to the address she had given me, saying that she had well nigh broken my heart. She knew that I had only refused my consent because it would have seemed a dishonourable action, to allow your son to marry her without your consent. She knew how hard it had been for me to do my duty, when I saw her pining before my eyes, but I forgave her wholly, and did not altogether blame her, seeing that it was the way of Nature that young women, when they once took to loving, should put their father altogether in the second place;