was one of gratitude and acceptance.  She was not a beautiful girl, but she had a beautiful look, and at this moment it was exalted by a feeling the old gentleman had once longed, but now dreaded inexpressibly, to see there.  What could it mean?  Why did she show at this unhappy crisis, interest, devotion, passion almost, for one she had regarded with open scorn when it was the dearest wish of his heart to see them united?  It was one of the contradictions of our mysterious human nature, and at this crisis and in this moment of secret heart-break and miserable doubt it made the old gentleman shrink, with his first feeling of actual despair.

The next moment Agnes had risen and they were both facing him.

“Good-evening, Agnes.”

Mr. Sutherland forced himself to speak lightly.

“Ah, Frederick, do I find you here?” The latter question had more constraint in it.

Frederick smiled.  There was an air of relief about him, almost of cheerfulness.

“I was just leaving,” said he.  “I was the bearer of a message to Miss Halliday.”  He had always called her Agnes before.

Mr. Sutherland, who had found his faculties confused by the expression he had surprised on the young girl’s face, answered with a divided attention: 

“And I have a message to give you.  Wait outside on the porch for me, Frederick, till I exchange a word with our little friend here.”

Agnes, who had thrust something she held into a box that lay beside her on a table, turned with a confused blush to listen.

Mr. Sutherland waited till Frederick had stepped into the hall.  Then he drew Agnes to one side and remorselessly, persistently, raised her face toward him till she was forced to meet his benevolent but searching regard.

“Do you know,” he whispered, in what he endeavoured to make a bantering tone, “how very few days it is since that unhappy boy yonder confessed his love for a young lady whose name I cannot bring myself to utter in your presence?”

The intent was kind, but the effect was unexpectedly cruel.  With a droop of her head and a hurried gasp which conveyed a mixture of entreaty and reproach, Agnes drew back in a vague endeavour to hide her sudden uneasiness.  He saw his mistake, and let his hands drop.

“Don’t, my dear,” he whispered.  “I had no idea it would hurt you to hear this.  You have always seemed indifferent, hard even, toward my scapegrace son.  And this was right, for—­for—­” What could he say, how express one-tenth of that with which his breast was labouring!  He could not, he dared not, so ended, as we have intimated, by a confused stammering.

Agnes, who had never before seen this object of her lifelong admiration under any serious emotion, felt an impulse of remorse, as if she herself had been guilty of occasioning him embarrassment.  Plucking up her courage, she wistfully eyed him.

“Did you imagine,” she murmured, “that I needed any warning against Frederick, who has never honoured me with his regard, as he has the young lady you cannot mention?  I’m afraid you don’t know me, Mr. Sutherland, notwithstanding I have sat on your knee and sometimes plucked at your beard in my infantile insistence upon attention.”