"You love her, Agapit?"
"Does it seem like hatred?"
"Yes—that is, no—but certainly you have treated her strangely, but I am glad, glad. I don't know when anything has so rejoiced me,—it takes me back through long years," and, sitting down, she covered her face with her nervous hands.
"I did not intend to tell you," said her cousin, hurriedly, and he laid a consoling finger on the back of her drooping head. "I wish now I had kept it from you."
"Ah, but I am selfish," she cried, immediately lifting her tearful face to him. "Forgive me,—I wish to know everything that concerns you. Is it this that has made you unhappy lately?"
With some reluctance he acknowledged that it was.
"But now you will be happy, my dear cousin. You must tell her at once. Although she is young, she will understand. It will make her more steady. It is the best thing that could happen to her."
Agapit surveyed her in quiet, intense affection. "Softly, my dear girl. You and I are too absorbed in each other. There is the omnipotent Mr. Nimmo to consult."
"He will not oppose. Oh, he will be pleased, enraptured,—I know that he will. I have never thought of it before, because of late years you have seemed not to give your thoughts to marriage, but now it comes to me that, in sending her here, one object might have been that she would please you; that you would please her. I am sure of it now. He is sorry for the past, he wishes to atone, yet he is still proud, and cannot say, 'Forgive me.' This young girl is the peace-offering."
Agapit smiled uneasily. "Pardon me for the thought, but you dispose somewhat summarily of the young girl."