Jean Charost smiled, and seemed for a moment to hesitate what he should reply. He pursued his purpose steadily, however, and at length answered, "That is a relationship which, wish as we may, we can not bring about. But, indeed, we are none to each other, Agnes. You are only my adopted child."
"No, not your child," she said; "you are too young for that. Why not your adopted sister?"
"I never heard of such an adoption," replied De Brecy; "but you are like a child to me, Agnes. I have carried you more than one mile in my arms, when you were an infant."
"And an orphan," she added, in a sad tone. "How much--how very much do I owe you, kindest and best of friends."
"Not so much, perhaps, as you imagine, Agnes," replied Jean Charost. "To save my own life in a moment of great danger, I made a solemn promise to protect, cherish, and educate you, as if you were my own. I had incautiously suffered myself to fall into the hands of a party of ruthless marauders, who, imagining that I had come to espy their actions, and perhaps to betray them, threatened to put me to death. There was no possibility of escape or resistance; but a gentleman who was with them, and who, though not of them, possessed apparently, from old associations, great influence over them, induced them to spare me on the condition I have mentioned. You were then an infant lying under the greenwood-tree, and I, it is true, hardly more than a boy; but I took a solemn promise, dear Agnes, and I have striven to perform it well. Yet I deserve no credit even for that dear Agnes; for what I did at first from a sense of duty, I afterward did from affection. Well did you win and did you repay my love; and, as I told Monsieur De Brives this morning, although at my death the small estate of De Brecy must pass away to another and very distant branch of my own family, all that I have won by my own exertions will be yours."
"Do you think I could enjoy it, and you dead?" asked Agnes, in a sad and almost reproachful tone. "Oh, no--no! All I should then want would be enough to find me place in a nunnery, there to pray that it might not be long till we met again. You have been all and every thing to me through life, dear Jean. What matters it what happens when you are gone?"
Jean Charost laid his hand gently upon hers and she might have felt that strong hand tremble; but her thoughts seemed busy with other things. She knew not the emotions she excited--doubtless she knew not even those which lay at the source of her own words and thoughts.
"It is sad," she continued, after a brief pause, "never to have seen a father's face or known a mother's blessing. To have no brother, no sister; and though the place of all has been supplied, and well supplied, by a friend, I sometimes long to know who were my parents, what was my family. I know you would tell me, if it were right for me to know, and therefore I have never asked--nor do I ask now, though the thought sometimes troubles me."
"I am ready to tell you all I know this moment," answered Jean Charost; "but that is not much, and it is a sad tale. Are you prepared to hear it, Agnes?"
"No--not if it is sad," she answered. "I have been looking forward to the time of your return, dear friend, as if every day of your stay were to be a day of joy, and not a shadow to come over me during the whole time. Yet you have been but one day here, and that has been more checkered with sadness than many I have known for years. I have shed tears, which I have not done before since you went away. I would have no more sad things to-day. Some other time--some other time you shall tell me all about myself."