My father recovered after a few days: he had taken cold, it was said, the
day before; and naturally, at seventy, a small matter is enough to upset
the balance even of a strong man. He got quite well; but he was willing
enough afterwards to leave the management of that ticklish kind of
property which involves human well-being in my hands, who could move
about more freely, and see with my own eyes how things were going on. He
liked home better, and had more pleasure in his personal existence in the
end of his life. Agnes is now my wife, as he had, of course, foreseen. It
was not merely the disinclination to receive her father's daughter, or to
take upon him a new responsibility, that had moved him, to do him
justice; but both these motives had told strongly. I have never been
told, and now will never be told, what his griefs against my mother's
family, and specially against that cousin, had been; but that he had been
very determined, deeply prejudiced, there can be no doubt. It turned out
after, that the first occasion on which I had been mysteriously
commissioned to him with a message which I did not understand, and which
for that time he did not understand, was the evening of the day on which
he had received the dead man's letter, appealing to him--to him, a man
whom he had wronged--on behalf of the child who was about to be left
friendless in the world. The second time, further letters--from the nurse
who was the only guardian of the orphan, and the chaplain of the place
where her father had died, taking it for granted that my father's house
was her natural refuge--had been received. The third I have already
described, and its results.

For a long time after, my mind was never without a lurking fear that the
influence which had once taken possession of me might return again. Why
should I have feared to be influenced, to be the messenger of a blessed
creature, whose wishes could be nothing but heavenly? Who can say? Flesh
and blood is not made for such encounters: they were more than I could