“I am not required to go yet; I would not desert him, dear Miss Summerson, even if I were.”

One other thing I felt it needful to touch upon before he left me.  I knew that I should not be worthier of the love I could not take if I reserved it.

“Mr. Woodcourt,” said I, “you will be glad to know from my lips before I say good night that in the future, which is clear and bright before me, I am most happy, most fortunate, have nothing to regret or desire.”

It was indeed a glad hearing to him, he replied.

“From my childhood I have been,” said I, “the object of the untiring goodness of the best of human beings, to whom I am so bound by every tie of attachment, gratitude, and love, that nothing I could do in the compass of a life could express the feelings of a single day.”

“I share those feelings,” he returned.  “You speak of Mr. Jarndyce.”

“You know his virtues well,” said I, “but few can know the greatness of his character as I know it.  All its highest and best qualities have been revealed to me in nothing more brightly than in the shaping out of that future in which I am so happy.  And if your highest homage and respect had not been his already—­which I know they are—­they would have been his, I think, on this assurance and in the feeling it would have awakened in you towards him for my sake.”

He fervently replied that indeed indeed they would have been.  I gave him my hand again.

“Good night,” I said, “Good-bye.”

“The first until we meet to-morrow, the second as a farewell to this theme between us for ever.”

“Yes.”

“Good night; good-bye.”

He left me, and I stood at the dark window watching the street.  His love, in all its constancy and generosity, had come so suddenly upon me that he had not left me a minute when my fortitude gave way again and the street was blotted out by my rushing tears.

But they were not tears of regret and sorrow.  No.  He had called me the beloved of his life and had said I would be evermore as dear to him as I was then, and I felt as if my heart would not hold the triumph of having heard those words.  My first wild thought had died away.  It was not too late to hear them, for it was not too late to be animated by them to be good, true, grateful, and contented.  How easy my path, how much easier than his!

CHAPTER LXII

Another Discovery

I had not the courage to see any one that night.  I had not even the courage to see myself, for I was afraid that my tears might a little reproach me.  I went up to my room in the dark, and prayed in the dark, and lay down in the dark to sleep.  I had no need of any light to read my guardian’s letter by, for I knew it by heart.  I took it from the place where I kept it, and repeated its contents by its own clear light of integrity and love, and went to sleep with it on my pillow.