 keep you waking?«
    »None, little woman, that you would readily understand,« said he.
    He spoke in a regretful tone so new to me, that I inwardly repeated, as if
that would help me to his meaning, »That I could readily understand!«
    »Remain a moment, Esther,« said he. »You were in my thoughts.«
    »I hope I was not the trouble, Guardian?«
    He slightly waved his hand, and fell into his usual manner. The change was
so remarkable, and he appeared to make it by dint of so much self-command, that
I found myself again inwardly repeating, »None that I could understand!«
    »Little woman,« said my guardian, »I was thinking - that is, I have been
thinking since I have been sitting here - that you ought to know, of your own
history, all I know. It is very little. Next to nothing.«
    »Dear Guardian,« I replied, »when you spoke to me before on that subject -«
    »But since then,« he gravely interposed, anticipating what I meant to say,
»I have reflected that your having anything to ask me, and my having anything to
tell you, are different considerations, Esther. It is perhaps my duty to impart
to you the little I know.«
    »If you think so, Guardian, it is right.«
    »I think so,« he returned, very gently, and kindly, and very distinctly. »My
dear, I think so now. If any real disadvantage can attach to your position, in
the mind of any man or woman worth a thought, it is right that you, at least, of
all the world should not magnify it to yourself, by having vague impressions of
its nature.«
    I sat down; and said, after a little effort to be as calm as I ought to be,
»One of my earliest remembrances, Guardian, is of these words: Your mother,
Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. The time will come, and soon
enough, when you will understand this better, and will feel it too, as no one
save a woman can.« I had covered my face with my hands, in repeating the words;
but I took them away now with a better kind of shame, I hope, and told him, that
to him I owed the blessing that I had from my childhood to that hour never,
never, never felt it. He put up
