“I understand you, sir,” I softly said. “I hold it—I have always held it—in veneration.”
“But no one knows, not even you,” he returned, “how much she has done, how much she has undergone, how hard she has striven. Dear Agnes!”
She had put her hand entreatingly on his arm, to stop him; and was very, very pale.
“Well, well!” he said with a sigh, dismissing, as I then saw, some trial she had borne, or was yet to bear, in connection with what my aunt had told me. “Well! I have never told you, Trotwood, of her mother. Has anyone?”
“Never, sir.”
“It’s not much—though it was much to suffer. She married me in opposition to her father’s wish, and he renounced her. She prayed him to forgive her, before my Agnes came into this world. He was a very hard man, and her mother had long been dead. He repulsed her. He broke her heart.”
Agnes leaned upon his shoulder, and stole her arm about his neck.
“She had an affectionate and gentle heart,” he said; “and it was broken. I knew its tender nature very well. No one could, if I did not. She loved me dearly, but was never happy. She was always labouring, in secret, under this distress; and being delicate and downcast at the time of his last repulse—for it was not the first, by many—pined away and died. She left me Agnes, two weeks old; and the grey hair that you recollect me with, when you first came.” He kissed Agnes on her cheek.
“My love for my dear child was a diseased love, but my mind was all unhealthy then. I say no more of that. I am not speaking of myself,