‘Then, Agnes, you wrong him very much. He my bad Angel, or anyone’s! He, anything but a guide, a support, and a friend to me! My dear Agnes! Now, is it not unjust, and unlike you, to judge him from what you saw of me the other night?’

‘I do not judge him from what I saw of you the other night,’ she quietly replied.

‘From what, then?’

‘From many things — trifles in themselves, but they do not seem to me to be so, when they are put together. I judge him, partly from your account of him, Trotwood, and your character, and the influence he has over you.’

There was always something in her modest voice that seemed to touch a chord within me, answering to that sound