Then, I should ride, I said. I could not have come through Canterbury today without stopping, if I had been coming to anyone but her.
She was pleased, but answered, “Tut, Trot; my old bones would have kept till tomorrow!” and softly patted my hand again, as I sat looking thoughtfully at the fire.
Thoughtfully, for I could not be here once more, and so near Agnes, without the revival of those regrets with which I had so long been occupied. Softened regrets they might be, teaching me what I had failed to learn when my younger life was all before me, but not the less regrets. “Oh, Trot,” I seemed to hear my aunt say once more; and I understood her better now—“Blind, blind, blind!”
We both kept silence for some minutes. When I raised my eyes, I found that she was steadily observant of me. Perhaps she had followed the current of my mind; for it seemed to me an easy one to track now, wilful as it had been once.
“You will find her father a white-haired old man,” said my aunt, “though a better man in all other respects—a reclaimed man. Neither will you find him measuring all human interests, and joys, and sorrows, with his one poor little inch-rule now. Trust me, child, such things must shrink very much, before they can be measured off in that way.”
“Indeed they must,” said I.
“You will find her,” pursued my aunt, “as good, as beautiful, as earnest, as disinterested, as she has always been. If I knew higher praise, Trot, I would bestow it on her.”
There was no higher praise for her; no higher reproach for me. Oh, how had I strayed so far away!