“If she trains the young girls whom she has about her, to be like herself,” said my aunt, earnest even to the filling of her eyes with tears, “Heaven knows, her life will be well employed! Useful and happy, as she said that day! How could she be otherwise than useful and happy!”
“Has Agnes any—” I was thinking aloud, rather than speaking.
“Well? Hey? Any what?” said my aunt, sharply.
“Any lover,” said I.
“A score,” cried my aunt, with a kind of indignant pride. “She might have married twenty times, my dear, since you have been gone!”
“No doubt,” said I. “No doubt. But has she any lover who is worthy of her? Agnes could care for no other.”
My aunt sat musing for a little while, with her chin upon her hand. Slowly raising her eyes to mine, she said:
“I suspect she has an attachment, Trot.”
“A prosperous one?” said I.
“Trot,” returned my aunt gravely, “I can’t say. I have no right to tell you even so much. She has never confided it to me, but I suspect it.”
She looked so attentively and anxiously at me (I even saw her tremble), that I felt now, more than ever, that she had followed my late thoughts. I summoned all the resolutions I had made, in all those many days and nights, and all those many conflicts of my heart.
“If it should be so,” I began, “and I hope it is—”
“I don’t know that it is,” said my aunt curtly. “You must not be ruled by my suspicions. You must keep them secret. They are very slight, perhaps. I have no right to speak.”