And why did he wish her to be assured of that?
Oh, had her grandfather been mistaken in those words he reported?
Durst she put faith in them, coming thus to her by another's voice?
Doubts and dreads and self-reproofs might still visit her from hour to hour, but the instinct of joy would not allow her to refuse admission to this supreme hope.

As if in spite of herself, the former gladness--nay, a gladness multiplied beyond conception--reigned once more in her heart.

Her grandfather would not speak lightly in such a matter as this; the meaning of his words was confessed, to all eternity immutable.

Had it, then, come to this?
The friend to whom she looked up with such reverence, with voiceless gratitude, when he condescended to speak kindly to _her_, the Peckovers' miserable little servant--he, after all these changes and chances of life, sought her now that she was a woman, and had it on his lips to say that he loved her.

Hitherto the impossible, the silly thought to be laughed out of her head, the desire for which she would have chid herself durst she have faced it seriously--was it become a very truth?
'Keep a good heart, Jane; things'll be better some day.' How many years since the rainy and windy night when he threw his coat over her and spoke those words?
Yet she could hear them now, and the tears that rushed to her eyes as she blessed him for his manly goodness were as much those of the desolate child as of the full-hearted woman.
And the change that she had observed in him since that evening at Danbury?
A real change, but only of manner.