Still there was one watcher on whom Mattie had not reckoned--a watcher who knew all the story, and guessed more than Mattie could have wished--to whom every change in Mattie was a thing of moment, which affected her. This humble agent, who had watched thus, since the time Mattie was a child, had some inkling of the truth--hearts that have but one idol are sensitive enough. Through the stolidity, the inflexibility of Mattie, Ann Packet read the despair, and charged it with her honest force. One night, when Mattie thought that the house was quiet for good--meaning by that, that her father and Ann Packet were in their rooms, and asleep--she was sitting by her little toilet-table, dwelling upon a hundred associations, that all verged to one common centre, when a tapping on the panels of her door startled her. "Who's there?" she asked; "is that you, Ann?" "Yes--let me in." She demanded it as a right, rather than as a favour, but Mattie admitted her without opposition. Ann Packet entered with her cap awry--hanging in fact, by strange filaments, to her back comb--and she placed herself in front of Mattie, with her arms akimbo, quite defiantly. "Now, what's the matter with _you_?" "Have I complained?--is there likely to be anything the matter, Ann?" "Yes, there is. And you'll just tell me, please, what is it!" "Ann, you forget yourself." "No, it's you who is forgetting yourself, and me, and all you had a liking and a love for wunst. It's you as has altered so dreffully, that I can only think of one thing to make you different." "Don't tell me!--don't tell me!" Mattie entreated. Ann Packet took no heed. "It's _him_!" she whispered. Mattie did not answer; she went back to her seat by the toilet-table, and turned her head away from the one faithful to her, to the last. She was vexed that she had not kept her secret closer, and deceived them _all_! "It's no good telling me it ain't him, Mattie--cos it is!" Ann Packet said, after following Mattie to the table, and taking another chair facing her; "there's nothing else--there can't be nothing else, girl. Well, I wouldn't grieve because his sight's come back--that's not right!" "Do you think I grieve for that?" cried Mattie, fired into defence; "oh! Ann, how can you ever think so badly of me!" "Then you're afraid that he won't like you any more?" "How do you know he ever liked me, or said he did?" "I--I guessed as much." Ann Packet, we know, possessed a secret as well as Mattie. "You guessed wrongly." "I guessed what you did, Mattie--there!" "I am not always in the right, Ann," was the hard answer; "I am a foolish woman, ever ready to drop into the snare of a few fine words!" Ann scarcely understood her; but she went on resolutely-- "You think he's tired of you--that it won't come right now. Why not?"