t of my usual line in telling her what I did; not
that I had received any charge of secrecy, or given even the slightest
promise to Holdsworth that I would not repeat his words. But I had an
uneasy feeling sometimes when I thought of what I had done in the
excitement of seeing Phillis so ill and in so much trouble. I meant to
have told Holdsworth when I wrote next to him; but when I had my
half-finished letter before me I sate with my pen in my hand
hesitating. I had more scruple in revealing what I had found out or
guessed at of Phillis's secret than in repeating to her his spoken
words. I did not think I had any right to say out to him what I
believed--namely, that she loved him dearly, and had felt his absence
even to the injury of her health. Yet to explain what I had done in
telling her how he had spoken about her that last night, it would be
necessary to give my reasons, so I had settled within myself to leave
it alone. As she had told me she should like to hear all the details
and fuller particulars and more explicit declarations first from him,
so he should have the pleasure of extracting the delicious tender
secret from her maidenly lips. I would not betray my guesses, my
surmises, my all but certain knowledge of the state of her heart. I had
received two letters from him after he had settled to his business;
they were full of life and energy; but in each there had been a message
to the family at the Hope Farm of more than common regard; and a slight
but distinct mention of Phillis herself, showing that she stood single
and alone in his memory. These letters I had sent on to the minister,
for he was sure to care for them, even supposing he had been
unacquainted with their writer, because they were so clever and so
picturesquely worded that they brought, as it were, a whiff of foreign
atmosphere into his circumscribed life. I used to wonder what was the
trade or business in which the minister would not have thriven,
mentally I mean, if it had so happened that he had been called into
that state. He would have made a capital engineer, that I know; and he
had a fancy for the sea, like many other land-locked men to whom the
great deep is a mystery and a fascination. He read law-books with
relish; and, once happening to borrow De Lolme on the British
Constitution (or some such title), he talked about jurisprudence till
he was far beyond my depth. But to return to Holdsworth's letters. When
the minister sent them back