THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE.—AGNES.
"All things are pure to those who are pure."
"Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile."
Perhaps some of my readers have been sufficiently interested to inquire, "Who is Agnes, and what of her?" Perhaps there may be some, who, like Mrs. McTravers, think she is not a proper character to introduce into a respectable family, coming as she did from a house which gives an air of taint, spoiled, lost, ruined, to every character that is found within its walls. I am aware that there is room for suspicion, but suspicion is not proof. In the case of Athalia, her acknowledged sin is no more proof of moral turpitude than any other act of a deranged mind. A lunatic may kill, yet it is not murder. A drunken husband may beat his loving wife, and love her still. It was not the man who struck the blow, it was the demon Rum! It was not Athalia who lost her virtue, it was the worse than demon who robbed her—intoxicated her—destroyed her reason—enslaved her mind—but he did not, could not, destroy her virtuous, benevolent heart. Her conduct toward Agnes, is alone sufficient to prove this. And if she had known as much as I did of Agnes, that there might be some ground of suspicion against her, it would have made no odds; she would have taken her in and taken care of her in the same way, if she had known that she was a great sinner; that is the true way to work reformation; and then she would have said, "Go, daughter, and sin no more."
But she knew nothing against Agnes; even after I had told her of the trunk, she said, all may yet be right. She was unwilling to believe that all was wrong. How triumphantly she met me as I came home in the evening—how a woman does love to triumph over us in a good cause, proving herself what she is in all the purest qualities of the heart,—our superior.
"I told you so," said Athalia. "I knew there had been some base deception, some wickedness practiced towards that poor girl to inveigle her into that house. Come up stairs, and you shall hear her story from her own lips; she is quite smart now, and able to sit up and talk, and looks so pretty—she is pretty, and that has been the great cause of her trouble. But she is a good girl; I have heard a good deal about her to-day, besides what she has told me. Phebe and Peter, have both been here, and such a meeting, oh! it would have done your heart good to have been here, and to see these poor blacks' conduct towards this girl, after I had told them the story of her adventures last evening: they hugged her, and kissed her with as much affection as though she had been one of their own; and then Peter went to see the lady where she had been living, at the place he got for her, the next day after your first interview with her, and the lady was terribly alarmed about the poor girl, and so she would not let Peter come back until she had the carriage up, and then she took him in—only to think, such a sweet, nice, pretty lady did not feel herself in the least disgraced to ride with a poor, old, negro wood-sawyer in her fine carriage, to visit a poor sick servant girl. And so she came, and such a time! why, if she had been her own child, she could not have been more affectionate. And then Agnes told us her story, and then I told Mrs. Meltrand, that is her name, about Mrs. De Vrai, and how that same man, who treated Agnes so badly, tried to steal Mrs. De Vrai's little girl, and then she said, 'how singular,' and then of course I said, what is so singular?"
"Ah me, it is a long story, and would not interest you, but I was robbed of a dear little girl, fifteen years ago, in England, by just such a man, in just the same way, but it could not have been this man, his name was Brentnall."
"Brentnall, why that is my name," said Agnes.
"Your name, why you never told me that before."
"No, ma'am, you never asked me, and I did not suppose that you cared to know anything about me, only that I was a good girl, and did your work well, and answered to the name of Agnes."