“If she has said nothing,” said Mr. Brownlow at last from the window, speaking with his back turned, “perhaps it will be as well for me to follow her example.” When he said this he returned slowly to his seat, and took his chair without ever looking at the culprit before him. “Of course you were wrong,” he added; “but you are young. You ought not to have been placed in such temptation. Go back to your work, Mr. Powys. It was a youthful indiscretion; and I am not one of those who reject an honorable apology. We will forget it for ever--we, and every body concerned--” “But, sir--” cried Powys. “No more,” said Mr. Brownlow. “Let by-gones be by-gones. You need not go up to Brownlows again till this occurrence has been forgotten. I told you Sara had sent you the book you left. It has been an unfortunate accident, but no more than an accident, I hope. Go back to your work, and forget it. Don’t do any thing rash. I accept your apology. Such a thing might have happened to the best of us. But you will be warned by it, and do not err again. Go back to your work.” “Then I am not to leave you?” said Powys, sorely tossed between hope and despair, thinking one moment that he was cruelly treated, and the next overwhelmed by the favor shown him. He looked so wistfully at his employer, that Mr. Brownlow, who saw him though he was not looking at him, had hard ado not to give him a little encouragement with his eyes. “If you can assure me this will not be repeated, I see no need for your leaving,” said Mr. Brownlow. “You know I wish you well, Powys. I am content that it should be as if it had never been.” The young man did not know what to say. The tumult in his mind had not subsided. He was in the kind of condition to which every thing which is not despair is hope. He was wild with wonder, bewilderment, confusion. He made some incoherent answer, and the next moment he found himself again at his desk, dizzy like a man who has fallen from some great height, yet feels himself unhurt upon solid ground after all. What was to come of it all? And Sara had sent him his book. Sara? Never in his wildest thoughts had he ventured to call her Sara before. He did not do it wittingly now. He was in a kind of trance of giddiness and bewilderment. Was it all real, or had it happened in a dream? Meanwhile Mr. Brownlow too sat and pondered this new development. What was it all to come to? He seemed to other people to be the arbiter of events; but that was what he himself asked, in a kind of consternation, of time and fate. CHAPTER XXIX. NEWS.