‘Thank you,’ she said. Then after a pause, ‘I wonder why you are so kind to me? Sometimes I am almost afraid of your kindness, lest it should make me selfish and conceited, make me think too highly of myself. Indeed I will try better to deserve it. I will read. I will improve my mind, so as to be more worthy of your society and teaching, when you come again.--But, Mr. Brownlow, I have never kept anything from my father until now. Is it deceitful of me not to tell him of these two letters? They would anger and vex him; and he has been so much happier and like his old self since you have been with us. I hate to disturb him and open up the past.’ ‘I think you are, at least, justified in waiting for a time before telling him,’ I faltered. For my poor head was spinning, and I had much ado to collect my wits. She would read, improve herself, be more worthy of my teaching when I came again, forsooth!--Ah! Nellie, Nellie, that I must listen with unmoved pedagogic countenance, that I must give you impersonal and sage advice, out of a broken heart!-- ‘Yes, wait,’ I repeated. ‘Later your course of action may be made clearer, and you may have an opportunity of speaking without causing him annoyance or distress. You are not disobeying his orders, in any case.’ ‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘See, the lamps are lit. My father must be home and we are late. Oh! how I wish you were not going away to-morrow. He will miss you, we shall all miss you so badly.’ I did not sleep much that night. CHAPTER XXXI. The ancient postboy drove out to Westrea next morning, and conveyed me and my impedimenta back to Cambridge. The journey was a silent one, I being as little disposed for conversation as he. My thoughts were not very cheerful. Yet what had I, after all, to make a poor mouth about? I had asked to know my own mind, and arrive at a definite decision concerning certain matters closely affecting my future. Now I knew it very thoroughly; and, as to those matters, had decided once and for all. It only remained for me to acquaint my kind old friend, the Master, with that decision as tactfully and delicately as might be. But how should I acquit myself? And how would he take it? And how far should I be compelled to speak of Hartover and Nellie, and of my own relation to both, to make my meaning clear? For what a tangle it all was--a tangle almost humorous, though almost tragic too, as such human tangles mostly are! Well, I supposed I must stick to my old method of blunt truth-telling, leaving the event to my Maker, who, having created that strange anomaly, the human heart, must surely know how best to deal with its manifold needs and vagaries! So far then, it was, after all, fairly plain sailing. But, unfortunately, these thoughts were not the only thing which troubled me.