"Yes; we come like the river, trailing long glories behind us—you know what Wordsworth says—but we do not go to be swallowed up in the ocean, and we are not alone. We have those that love us to be with us, and prevent us from getting sad with thought. I have you, Jack."
"Yes, Phil." He could not meet her face, which was so full of unselfish and passionless affection, because his own eyes were brimming over with passion.
"Take me in, Jack," she said, when they reached Agatha's lawn. "It is enough for one day."
She led him to the morning-room, cool and sheltered, where Agatha was writing the letter we have already read. And she introduced him as Jack Dunquerque, her friend.
Jack explained that he was rowing up the river, that he saw Miss Fleming by accident, that he had taken her for a row up the stream, and so on—all in due form.
"Jack and I are old friends," said Phillis.
Agatha did not ask how old, which was fortunate. But she put aside her letters and sent for tea into the garden. Jack became more amiable and more sympathetic than any young man Mrs. L'Estrange had ever known. So much did he win upon her that, having ascertained that he was a friend of Lawrence Colquhoun, she asked him to dinner.
Jack's voyage homeward was a joyful one. Many is the journey begun in joy that ends in sorrow; few are those which begin, as Jack's bucketing up the river, in uncertainty, and end in unexpected happiness.
CHAPTER XVI.
"Souvent femme varie,