“I think I love you,” said the gentle and affectionate Jane. “Will you kiss me? my sister Agnes does when I ask her.”
“Why shouldn’t I, my bonnie, bonnie lady? Why shouldn’t I? Oh! indeed, but you are bonnie, and yet be crazed with love! Well, well, he will never comb a gray head that deserted the bonnie Fawn of Spring-vale.”
Jane, who was much the taller, stooped, and with a smile of melancholy, but unconscious sympathy, kissed the forlorn creature’s lips, and after beckoning Agnes to follow her, passed on.
That embrace! Who could describe its character? Oh! man, man, and woman, woman, think of this!
Agnes, after Jane and she had returned home, found that a search had been instigated during their absence for the letter which Charles had written to his father. Mr. Sinclair, anxious to return it, had missed it from among his papers, and felt seriously concerned at its disappearance.
“I only got it to read to the family,” said he, “and what am I to say, or what can I say, when Mr. Osborne asks me, as he will, to return it? Agnes, do you know anything of it?”
Agnes, who, from the interview between Jane and the unsettled Fanny Morgan, saw at once that it had got, by some means unknown to the family, into her sister’s hands, knew not exactly in what terms to reply. She saw too, that Jane looked upon the possession of the letter as a secret, and in her presence she felt that considering her sister’s view of the matter, and her state of mind, she could not, without pressing too severely on the gentle creature’s sorrow, inform her father of the truth.
“Papa,” said the admirable and considerate girl, “the letter I have no doubt will be found. I beg of you papa, I beg of you not to be uneasy about it; it will be found.”
This she said in a tone as significant as possible, with a hope that her father might infer from her manner that Jane had the letter in question.
The old man looked at Agnes, and appeared as if striving to collect the meaning of what she said, but he was not long permitted to remain in any doubt upon the subject.