But I did not wait for his answer. In my womanish foolishness, afraid that I was grieving him, I took away the opportunity, that opportunity--what misery it might have saved me: and spoke myself, wearing the time away till he had quite recovered himself. "I do not think you would hide anything from me, Harry, which I ought to know; my father scarcely knows that I am a woman now; it is hard for him to get over the habit of thinking me a child, but you are no older than I am; we are equal then--and you would not use me as if I was unfit to know all that concerns us both." "We are equal then," he said, repeating my words hurriedly, but without any answer to the meaning of them; "but I do not think we are nearly equals in anything else, Hester. Your sincere heart--oh, if I begin to speak of that, I will soon make myself out a poor fellow, and I would rather you did not think me so just yet; equal! why I am justly entitled to call myself your superior in that particular at least, for do you know I am two or three years older than you are?" "I was not speaking of that," said I gravely. "I know you were not speaking of that," said Harry, "you were speaking of the summer cloud. See, Hester, there is another on the sky; look how it floats away with the sunshine and the wind. There shall be neither secret nor mystery between us, trust me. I want your help and sympathy too much for that." "There shall be!" I said to myself in an under tone. I was quite satisfied; this promise was fortunate, and Henry did not say: "there is not." But at this moment we heard the door open below, and Mr. Osborne's voice asking for my father. I rose in great haste and ran up stairs. I forgot everything of more importance, and only remembered how embarrassed and uncomfortable I should be, if Mr. Osborne came in and found us together. I went back again to my room with my heart beating quick. The vague and uncertain doubtfulness which had taken possession of me did not prompt any distrust of Harry. It was not that I found that he was deceiving me, or that I dreamed of such a possibility. The utmost length to which my suspicions went, was to a little jealousy of something which I did not know, and was not told of, and when I reflected over it in my own room, I found no particular foundation for these doubts of mine; but still I should have much preferred that Harry had not offered to take our name. It was generous like himself. I was no heiress that he should have done it for the land, or for the rank I brought him. Instead of that, he did it for pure love; but I was perverse still, and I was not pleased.