“Miss Agnes—” but for the life of me I could not proceed. It was, however, sufficient to induce her to look up, and our eyes met. At the same instant she took my proffered hand. What happened afterward I could never remember, only I recollect the blood rushed in torrents to my cheeks, and I fancied that the tiny white hand I held in my own, trembled a little, a very little, but still trembled. When I woke from the delirium of indescribable emotions that ensued, I found myself sitting with my guardian and Agnes in the parlor, but whether I walked there on my head or my feet I cannot to this day remember. The month which followed was among the happiest of my life, for it was spent at the side of Agnes. We walked, rode, chatted, and sang together; not a morning or an evening found us apart; and insensibly her presence became to me almost as necessary as the air I breathed. Yet—I know not how it was—Agnes was a mystery to me. At first, indeed, we were almost on the same footing as if we had been brother and sister, but after I had been at my guardian’s about a month, she began to grow reserved, although at times she would display all her old frankness, united with even more than her usual gaiety. Often too, when I looked up at her suddenly, I would find her gazing into my face, and when thus detected, she would blush and cast her eyes down, and seem so embarrassed that I scarcely knew what to think, unless it was that Agnes—but no!—how could she be in love with one almost a stranger? For myself, I would have given the world, if I could only have penetrated the secrets of her heart, and learned there whether the affection toward her, which I had felt had stolen almost insensibly across me, had been returned. Yes! I would have given an emperor’s ransom to discover what my timidity would not allow me to enquire. It is an old story, and has been told by hundreds before—this tale of a young lover—but I cannot refrain from rehearsing it again. I was sadly perplexed. Not a day passed but what I rose to the height of hope, or fell to the depth of despair. A smile from Agnes was the sunlight of my existence, and her reserve plunged me in unfathomable darkness. I could not penetrate the fickleness of her manner, especially when any of her young female friends were visiting her. If I spoke to them with any show of interest, she would either be unnaturally gay or singularly silent, and when I came to address her, I would be received with chilling coldness. Yet, at other times, my despair would be relieved by a return of her old frankness, and a hundred times have I been on the point of telling her the whole story of my love, but either my fears, or her returning reserve, prevented my purpose from being executed.