I don't think Sister Agnes read much that morning. Her gaze was oftener away from her book than on it. After a time she came and joined me in gathering nuts and blackberries. She seemed brighter and happier than I had hitherto seen her, entering into all my little projects with as much eagerness as though she were herself a child. How soon I had learned to love her! Why had I lived all those dreary years at Park Hill without knowing her? But I could never again feel quite so lonely, never quite such an outcast from that common household love which all the girls I had known seemed to accept as a matter of course. Even if I should unhappily be separated from Sister Agnes, I could not cease to love her; and although I had seen her for the first time barely forty-eight hours ago, my child's instinct told me that she possessed that steadfastness, sweet and strong, which allows no name that has once been written on its heart to be erased therefrom for ever. My thoughts were running in some such groove, but they were all as tangled and confused as the luxuriant undergrowth around me. It must have been out of this confusion that the impulse arose which caused me to address a question to Sister Agnes that startled her as much as if a shell had exploded at her feet. "Dear Sister Agnes," I said, "you seem to know my history, and all about me. Did you know my papa and mamma?" She dropped the leaf that held her fruit, and turned on me a haggard frightened face, that made my own grow pale. "What makes you think that I know your history?" she stammered out. "You who are so intimate with Lady Pollexfen must know why I was brought to Dupley Walls: you must know something about me. If you know anything about my father and mother, oh! do please tell me; please do!" "I am tired, Janet. Let us sit down," she said, wearily. So, hand in hand, we went back to the rustic seat and sat down. She sat for a minute or two without speaking, gazing straight before her into some far-away forest vista, but seeing only with that inner eye which: searches through the dusty chambers of heart and brain whenever some record of the past has to be brought forth to answer the questions of to-day. "I do know your history, dear child," she said at length, "and both your parents were friends of mine." "Were! Then neither of them is alive?" "Alas! no. They have been dead many years. Your father was drowned in one of the Italian lakes. Your mother died a year afterwards." All the sweet vague hopes that I had cherished in secret, ever since I could remember anything, of some day finding at least one of my parents alive, died out utterly as Sister Agnes said these words. My heart seemed to faint within me. I flung myself into her arms, and burst into tears.