Thus my troubled heart could at length rest in peace. Languid and wearied with so many emotions, I could yield myself up to the strange luxury and sweetness of being once more, not merely near him--that was little--but of feeling, of knowing, of reading in his face, so kindly turned to mine, that he believed in me. As I sat by him, his hand clasped in both mine, restored to what I prized even higher than his affection--his esteem, it seemed like a dream, too blissful to be true, and of which my eyes ever kept seeking in his the reality and the confirmation. "Oh, Cornelius," I said once, "are you sure you do not think I did it?" He looked pained at being reminded that he had thought me guilty. "Have some wine," he observed, hurriedly, "I am sure you can now." He went to the back parlour and brought out a glassfull. He took some himself, and made me drink the rest. It revived me. I felt I could eat, and I took some biscuits from the plateful he handed me. He watched me with a pleased and attentive smile, and in putting by both glass and plate, he sighed like one much relieved. "When I was a boy." he said, sitting down again by me, "I caught a wild bird, and caged it, thinking it would sing; but it would not eat; it hung its head and pined away. I was half afraid this evening you were going to do like my poor bird." "I hope I know better than a bird," I replied, rather piqued at the comparison, "and that was a very foolish bird not to take to the cage where you had put it--so kind of you." "Very; yet, strange to say, it liked its cage and its captor as little as you on the contrary seem to fancy yours." "Yes, but it is scarcely worth while putting or keeping me in a cage, Cornelius; I am very useless; I can't even sing--not a bit." "Never mind," he replied, smiling, "I could better dispense with all the birds of the air than with you, my pet." I thought it was very kind of Cornelius to say so, and to prefer me to nightingales, larks, black-birds, thrushes, and the whole sweet-singing race. I felt cheerful, happy, almost merry, and we were talking together gaily enough when the door opened, and Kate entered. She had left me plunged in apathetic despondency; on seeing me chatting with her brother in as free and friendly a fashion as if nothing had happened, she looked bewildered. She came forward in total silence, and behind her came Miriam, who closed the door and looked at us calmly through all her evident wonder. "It's a very wet night," observed Kate, sitting down opposite us and looking at me very hard. "Is it?" said Cornelius, rising to give Miriam a chair, then returning to me. "Very," rejoined his sister, who could not take her eyes from me, as, with the secure familiarity of an indulged child, I untwined one of his dark locks to its full extent, observing-- "It is too long; let me cut it off with Kate's scissors."