"No, no, of course not. I rejoice to find that you have so good and powerful a friend in--Miss Carr. She must be--a truly good--woman." "She's everything that's good and beautiful and kind," I cried, bursting into raptures about her. "I'm to have books and to go there every week, and she trusts to me to try and succeed well in my new life. Oh, Hallett, you can't think how I love her." He laid his hand on my shoulder and gazed with a strange light in his eyes upon my eager face. "That's right," he said. "Yes--love her, and never give her cause to blush for her kindness to you, my boy." He sat listening to me eagerly as I went on telling him her words, describing her home, everything I could think of, but the one subject tabooed, and of that I gave no hint, while he, poor fellow, sat drinking in what was to him a poisoned draught, and I unwittingly kept on adding to his pain. "I'm only afraid of one thing," I said with all a boy's outspoken frankness. "And what is that, Antony?" "I'm afraid that when she is married to Mr Lister--" His hand seemed to press my shoulder more tightly. "Yes," he said in a whisper, "she is to be married to Mr Lister." "Yes, I knew that the first day I came to the office." "It is the common talk there," he said with knitted brows. "And what is your fear, Antony?" "That when she is married to Mr Lister she will forget all about me." "You wrong her, boy," he said almost fiercely; and I stared at his strange display of excitement, for I had not the key then to his thoughts, and went on blindly again and again tearing open his throbbing wound. "You wrong her," he said. "Antony, Miss Carr is a woman to have won whose esteem is to have won a priceless gem, and he who goes farther, and wins her love, can look but for one greater happiness--that of heaven." He was soaring far beyond my reach, grovelling young mole that I was, and I said in an uneasy way that must have sounded terribly commonplace and selfish: "You don't think she will forget me, then?" "No," he said sternly. "There is that in her face which seems to say that she is one who never forgets--never forgives. She is no common woman, Antony; be worthy of her trust, and think of her name in your prayers before you sleep." I gazed at him curiously, he seemed so strange; and, noticing my uneasy looks, he said in a cheerful voice: "There, we will not talk so seriously any more. You see how I trust you, Antony, in return for your confidence in me. Now let's talk of pleasant things. An engineer, eh?"