She accepted them with a slight blush, the first he had ever seen on her face, or at least had ever noted there.  It caused him such surprise that he forgot Amabel’s presence in the garden till they came upon her at the gate.

“A pleasant evening,” observed that young girl in her high, unmusical voice.

“Very,” was Miss Halliday’s short reply; and for a moment the two faces were in line as he held open the gate before his departing guest.

They were very different faces in feature and expression, and till that night he had never thought of comparing them.  Indeed, the fascination which beamed from Amabel Page’s far from regular features had put all others out of his mind, but now, as he surveyed the two girls, the candour and purity which marked Agnes’s countenance came out so strongly under his glance that Amabel lost all attraction for him, and he drew his young neighbour hastily away.

Amabel noted the movement and smiled.  Her contempt for Agnes Halliday’s charms amounted to disdain.

She might have felt less confidence in her own had she been in a position to note the frequent glances Frederick cast at his old playmate as they proceeded slowly up the road.  Not that there was any passion in them—­he was too full of care for that; but the curiosity which could prompt him to turn his head a dozen times in the course of so short a walk, to see why Agnes Halliday held her face so persistently away from him, had an element of feeling in it that was more or less significant.  As for Agnes, she was so unlike her accustomed self as to astonish even herself.  Whereas she had never before walked a dozen steps with him without indulging in some sharp saying, she found herself disinclined to speak at all, much less to speak lightly.  In mutual silence, then, they reached the gateway leading into the Halliday grounds.  But Agnes having passed in, they both stopped and for the first time looked squarely at each other.  Her eyes fell first, perhaps because his had changed in his contemplation of her.  He smiled as he saw this, and in a half-careless, half-wistful tone, said quietly: 

“Agnes, what would you think of a man who, after having committed little else but folly all his life, suddenly made up his mind to turn absolutely toward the right and to pursue it in face of every obstacle and every discouragement?”

“I should think,” she slowly replied, with one quick lift of her eyes toward his face, “that he had entered upon the noblest effort of which man is capable, and the hardest.  I should have great sympathy for that man, Frederick.”

“Would you?” he said, recalling Amabel’s face with bitter aversion as he gazed into the womanly countenance he had hitherto slighted as uninteresting.  “It is the first kind word you have ever given me, Agnes.  Possibly it is the first I have ever deserved.”

And without another word he doffed his hat, saluted her, and vanished down the hillside.