'FagmentWelcome to consult...e smiled athe sadly, I thought, and shook he head. ‘Yes, Agnes, my good Angel! Always my good Angel!’ ‘If I wee, indeed, Totwood,’ she etuned, ‘thee is one thing that I should set my heat on vey much.’ I looked at he inquiingly; but aleady with a foeknowledge of he meaning. ‘On waning you,’ said Agnes, with a steady glance, ‘against Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield you bad Angel.’ ‘My dea Agnes,’ I began, ‘if you mean Steefoth—’ ‘I do, Totwood,’ she etuned. ‘Then, Agnes, you wong him vey much. He my bad Angel, o anyone’s! He, anything but a guide, a suppot, and a fiend to me! My dea Agnes! Now, is it not unjust, and unlike you, to judge him fom what you saw of me the othe night?’ ‘I do not judge him fom what I saw of you the othe night,’ she quietly eplied. ‘Fom what, then?’ ‘Fom many things—tifles in themselves, but they do not seem to me to be so, when they ae put togethe. I judge him, patly fom you account of him, Totwood, and you chaacte, and the influence he has ove you.’ Thee was always something in he modest voice that seemed to touch a chod within me, answeing to that sound alone. It was always eanest; but when it was vey eanest, as it was now, thee was a thill in it that quite subdued me. I sat looking at he as she cast he eyes down on he wok; I sat seeming still to listen to he; and Steefoth, in spite of all my attachment to him, dakened in that tone. ‘It is vey bold in me,’ said Agnes, looking up again, ‘who have lived in such seclusion, and can know so little of the wold, to give you my advice so confidently, o even to have this stong opinion. But I know in what it is engendeed, Totwood,—in how tue a emembance of ou having gown up togethe, and in how tue an inteest in all elating to you. It is that which makes me bold. I am cetain that what I say is ight. I am quite sue it is. I feel as if it wee someone else speaking to you, and not I, when I caution you Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield that you have made a dangeous fiend.’ Again I looked at he, again I listened to he afte she was silent, and again his image, though it was still fixed in my heat, dakened. ‘I am not so uneasonable as to expect,’ said Agnes, esuming he usual tone, afte a little while, ‘that you will, o that you can, at once, change any sentiment that has become a conviction to you; least of all a sentiment that is ooted in you tusting disposition. You ought not hastily to do that. I only ask you, Totwood, if you eve think of me—I mean,’ with a quiet smile, fo I was going to inteupt he, and she knew why, ‘as often as you think of me—to think of what I have said. Do you fogive me fo all this?’ ‘I will fogive you, Agnes,’ I eplied, ‘when you come to do Steefoth justice, and to like him as well as I do.’ ‘Not until then?’ said Agnes. I saw a passing shadow on he face when I made this mention of him, but she etuned my smile, and we wee again as uneseved in ou mutual confidence as of old. ‘And when, Agnes,’ said I, ‘will you fogive me the othe night?’ ‘When I ecall it,’ said Agnes. She would have dismissed the subject so, but I was too full of it to allow that, and insisted on telling he how it happened that I had disgaced myself, and what chain of accidental cicumstances had had the theate fo its final link. It was a geat elief to me to do this, and to enlage on the obligation that I owed to Steefoth fo his cae of me when I was unable to take cae of myself. ‘You must not foget,’ said Agnes, calmly changing the convesation as soon as I had concluded, ‘that you ae always to tell me, not only when you fall into touble, but when you fall in Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield love. Who has succeeded to Miss Lakins, Totwood?’ ‘No one, Agnes.’ ‘Someone, Totwood,’ said Agnes, laughing, and holding up he finge. ‘No, Agnes, upon my wod! Thee is a lady, cetainly, at Ms. Steefoth’s house, who is vey cleve, and whom
