Agnes took a chair by his side, and looked at him with a gentle surprise.

'Is it quite reasonable to be so angry with her, because your
brother preferred her to me?' she asked.

Henry turned on her sharply. 'Do you defend the Countess,
of all the people in the world?'

'Why not?' Agnes answered. 'I know nothing against her.
On the only occasion when we met, she appeared to be a singularly timid,
nervous person, looking dreadfully ill; and being indeed so ill that she
fainted under the heat of my room. Why should we not do her justice?
We know that she was innocent of any intention to wrong me; we know
that she was not aware of my engagement--'

Henry lifted his hand impatiently, and stopped her.
'There is such a thing as being too just and too forgiving!'
he interposed. 'I can't bear to hear you talk in that patient way,
after the scandalously cruel manner in which you have been treated.
Try to forget them both, Agnes. I wish to God I could help you to
do it!'

Agnes laid her hand on his arm. 'You are very good to me, Henry;
but you don't quite understand me. I was thinking of myself
and my trouble in quite a different way, when you came in.
I was wondering whether anything which has so entirely filled my heart,
and so absorbed all that is best and truest in me, as my feeling
for your brother, can really pass away as if it had never existed.
I have destroyed the last visible things that remind me of him.
In this world I shall see him no more. But is the tie that once bound us,