under the heat of my room. Why should we not do her justice? We know that she was innocent of any intention to wrong me; we know that she was not aware of my engagement-’
Henry lifted his hand impatiently, and stopped her. ‘There is such a thing as being too just and too forgiving!’ he interposed. ‘I can’t bear to hear you talk in that patient way, after the scandalously cruel manner in which you have been treated. Try to forget them both, Agnes. I wish to God I could help you to do it!’
Agnes laid her hand on his arm. ‘You are very good to me, Henry; but you don’t quite understand me. I was thinking of myself and my trouble in quite a different way, when you came in. I was wondering whether anything which has so entirely filled my heart, and so absorbed all that is best and truest in me, as my feeling for your brother, can really pass away as if it had never existed. I have destroyed the last visible things that remind me of him. In this world I shall see him no more. But is the tie that once bound us, completely broken? Am I as entirely parted from the good and evil fortune of his life as if we had never met and never loved? What do you think, Henry? I can hardly believe it.’
‘If you could bring the retribution on him that he has deserved,’ Henry Westwick answered sternly, ‘I might be inclined to agree with you.’
As that reply passed his lips, the old nurse appeared again at the door, announcing another visitor.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, my dear. But here is little Mrs. Ferrari wanting to know when she may say a few words to you.’
Agnes turned to Henry, before she replied. ‘You remember Emily Bidwell, my favourite pupil years ago at the village school, and afterwards my maid? She left me, to marry an Italian courier, named Ferrari-and I am afraid it has not turned out very well. Do you mind my having her in here for a minute or two?’
Henry rose to take his leave. ‘I should be glad to see Emily again at any other time,’ he said. ‘But it is best that I should go now. My mind is disturbed, Agnes; I might say things to you, if I stayed here any longer, which-which are better not said now. I shall cross the Channel by the mail to-night, and see how a few weeks’ change will help me.’ He took her hand. ‘Is there anything in the world that I can do for you?’ he asked very earnestly. She thanked him, and tried to release her hand. He held it with a tremulous lingering grasp. ‘God bless you, Agnes!’ he said in faltering tones, with his eyes on the ground. Her face flushed again, and the next instant turned paler than ever; she knew his heart as well as he knew it himself-she was too distressed to speak. He lifted her hand to his lips, kissed it fervently, and, without looking at her again, left the room. The nurse hobbled after him to the head of the stairs: she had not forgotten the time when the younger brother had been the unsuccessful rival of the elder for the hand of Agnes. ‘Don’t be down-hearted, Master Henry,’ whispered the old woman, with the unscrupulous common sense of persons in the lower rank of life. ‘Try her again, when you come back!’
Left alone for a few moments, Agnes took a turn in the room, trying to compose herself. She paused before a little water-colour drawing on the wall, which had belonged to her mother: it was her own portrait when she was a child. ‘How much happier we should be,’ she thought to herself sadly, ‘if we never grew up!’
The courier’s wife was shown in-a little meek melancholy woman, with white eyelashes, and watery eyes, who curtseyed deferentially and was troubled with a small chronic cough. Agnes shook hands with her kindly. ‘Well, Emily, what can I do for you?’
The courier’s wife made rather a strange answer: ‘I’m afraid to tell you, Miss.’
‘Is it such a very difficult favour to grant? Sit down, and let me hear how you are going on. Perhaps the petition will slip out while we are talking. How does your husband behave to you?’
Emily’s light grey eyes looked more watery than ever. She shook her head and sighed resignedly. ‘I have no positive complaint to make against him, Miss. But I’m afraid he doesn’t care about me; and he seems to take no interest in his home-I may almost say he’s tired of his home. It might be better for both of us, Miss, if he went travelling for a while-not to mention the money, which is beginning to be wanted sadly.’ She put her handkerchief to her eyes, and sighed again more resignedly than ever.
‘I don’t quite understand,’ said Agnes. ‘I thought your husband had an engagement to take some ladies to Switzerland and Italy?’
‘That was his ill-luck, Miss. One of the ladies fell ill-and the others wouldn’t go without her. They paid him a month’s salary as compensation. But they had engaged him for the autumn and winter-and the loss is serious.’
‘I am sorry to hear it, Emily. Let us hope he will soon have another chance.’
‘It’s not his turn, Miss, to be recommended when the next applications come to the couriers’ office. You see, there are so many of them out of employment just now. If he could be privately recommended-’ She stopped, and left the unfinished sentence to speak for itself.
Agnes understood her directly. ‘You want my recommendation,’ she rejoined. ‘Why couldn’t you say so at once?’
Emily blushed. ‘It would be such a chance for my husband,’ she answered confusedly. ‘A letter, inquiring for a good courier (a six months’ engagement, Miss!) came to the office this morning. It’s another man’s turn to be chosen-and the secretary will recommend him. If my husband could only send his testimonials by the same post-with just a word in your name, Miss-it might turn the scale, as they say. A private recommendation between gentlefolks goes so far.’ She stopped again, and sighed again, and looked down at the carpet, as if she had some private reason for feeling a little ashamed of herself.
Agnes began to be rather weary of the persistent tone of mystery in which her visitor spoke. ‘If you want my interest with any friend of mine,’ she said, ‘why can’t you tell me the name?’
The courier’s wife began to cry. ‘I’m ashamed to tell you, Miss.’
For the first time, Agnes spoke sharply. ‘Nonsense, Emily! Tell me the name directly-or drop the subject-whichever you like best.’
Emily made a last desperate effort. She wrung her handkerchief hard in her lap, and let off the name as if she had been letting off a loaded gun:-’Lord Montbarry!’
Agnes rose and looked at her.
‘You have disappointed me,’ she said very quietly, but with a look which the courier’s wife had never seen in her face before. ‘Knowing what you know, you ought to be aware that it is impossible for me to communicate with Lord Montbarry. I always supposed you had some delicacy of feeling. I am sorry to find that I have been mistaken.’
Weak as she was, Emily had spirit enough to feel the reproof. She walked in her meek noiseless way to the door.
‘I beg your pardon, Miss. I am not quite so bad as you think me. But I beg your pardon, all the same.’
She opened the door. Agnes called her back. There was something in the woman’s apology that appealed irresistibly to her just and generous nature. ‘Come,’ she said; ‘we must not part in this way. Let me not misunderstand you. What is it that you expected me to do?’
Emily was wise enough to answer this time without any reserve. ‘My husband will send his testimonials, Miss, to Lord Montbarry in Scotland. I only wanted you to let him say in his letter that his wife has been known to you since she was a child, and that you feel some little interest in his welfare on that account.
I don’t ask it now, Miss. You have made me understand that I
