“You are as yet too innocent—oh! far too innocent, if not too young, to understand these matters,” said Mr. Vernon, gazing with all a father’s affection upon his beauteous and artless child. “Neither is it for me to remove the film from your eyes in this respect.”
“And yet, dear papa,” she observed, with the most endearing, amiable naïveté, “if no one will point out the shoals, rocks, and quicksands to me, how can I possibly avoid them? You see that just now I erred by receiving that person too frankly—too cordially——”
“And the old man who called the other evening, too,” said her father, with a smile. “Now, do you not perceive, my dear child, that there is something suspicious in these two visits, which indeed appear to have some degree of relationship to each other, and perhaps had the same instigation. I cannot conceive that accident should send two persons hither, separately and at a short interval, on the same pretence, unless they were acting in collusion. That such an accidental coincidence might happen, I admit; but prudence—worldly prudence, my love, makes us look suspiciously upon such events; and I confess that this is the light in which I view the present occurrences. The woman represented herself as the widow of a General who had lately died in India: now I happen to be so well-informed on these matters as to be enabled to state most emphatically that no General-officer of that name has existed for many years past. Finding herself at fault in respect to her first assertion, your visitor endeavoured to make good her tale by means of a second; but the falsehood was equally palpable in this latter case. Now, therefore, my dearest Agnes, you comprehend that there are good and just grounds for suspecting the motive which led her hither.”
“Is it possible that persons can be so wicked?” exclaimed the young maiden.
“It is, alas! too true,” replied her father; “and therefore you cannot be too much upon your guard in respect to strangers. I wonder that Mrs. Gifford did not represent to you the impropriety of allowing the old man to force his way into your presence a few days ago——”
“Both Mrs. Gifford and Jane spoke to me on the subject after he was gone,” said Agnes, desirous to rescue her two servants from blame: “but I fancied their timidity had made them conjure up visions of thieves and housebreakers, and I only laughed while they remonstrated.”
“Then you now perceive, dear Agnes, that they were right in the observations which they undertook to address to you,” said Mr. Vernon.
“Yes—and I am sorry that I did not listen with more attention,” answered the amiable girl. “In future, my dear father, I will allow no one to enter the house unless he or she be the bearer of a letter from you.”
“This is precisely what I could desire, Agnes,” exclaimed Mr. Vernon; “and you will afford me unfeigned pleasure if you adhere to this resolution.”
“You know that I will do all you enjoin—even without questioning your motives,” observed Agnes. “Command—and I obey.”