 »I have
missed you so much, lately!«
    »Indeed?« she replied. »Again! And so soon?«
    I shook my head.
    »I don't know how it is, Agnes; I seem to want some faculty of mind that I
ought to have. You were so much in the habit of thinking for me, in the happy
old days here, and I came so naturally to you for counsel and support, that I
really think I have missed acquiring it?«
    »And what is it?« said Agnes, cheerfully.
    »I don't know what to call it,« I replied. »I think I am earnest and
persevering?«
    »I am sure of it,« said Agnes.
    »And patient, Agnes?« I inquired, with a little hesitation.
    »Yes,« returned Agnes, laughing. »Pretty well.«
    »And yet,« said I, »I get so miserable and worried, and am so unsteady and
irresolute in my power of assuring myself, that I know I must want - shall I
call it - reliance, of some kind?«
    »Call it so, if you will,« said Agnes.
    »Well!« I returned. »See here! You come to London, I rely on you, and I have
an object and a course at once. I am driven out of it, I come here, and in a
moment I feel an altered person. The circumstances that distressed me are not
changed, since I came into this room; but an influence comes over me in that
short interval that alters me, oh, how much for the better! What is it? What is
your secret, Agnes?«
    Her head was bent down, looking at the fire.
    »It's the old story,« said I. »Don't laugh, when I say it was always the
same in little things as it is in greater ones. My old troubles were nonsense,
and now they are serious; but whenever I have gone away from my adopted sister
-«
    Agnes looked up - with such a Heavenly face! - and gave me her hand, which I
kissed.
    »Whenever I have not had you, Agnes, to advise and approve in the beginning,
I have seemed to go wild, and to get into all sorts of difficulty. When I have
come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come to peace and
happiness. I come home, now, like a tired
