Would you like me to help undress you?"
"Oh, no!" Aggie laughed. "Why, of course I can undress myself;" and she
laughed at the idea of assistance being required in such a matter.
"Then, good night!" the housekeeper said. "I shall leave the door ajar,
between the two rooms, when I come to bed."
The next morning, soon after breakfast, Sergeant Wilks was ushered into
the study, where the squire was expecting him. The two men had had hard
thoughts of each other, for many years. The squire regarded the
sergeant as a man who had inveigled his son into marrying his daughter,
while the sergeant regarded the squire as a heartless and unnatural
father, who had left his son to die alone among strangers. The
conversation with John Petersham had taught the sergeant that he had
wronged the squire, by his estimate of him, and that he was to be
pitied rather than blamed in the matter. The squire, on his part, was
grateful to the sergeant for the care he had bestowed upon the child,
and for restoring her to him, and was inclined, indeed, at the moment,
to a universal goodwill to all men.
The sergeant was pale, but self possessed and quiet; while the squire,
moved, by the events of the night before, out of the silent reserve in
which he had, for years, enveloped himself, was agitated and nervous.
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