I thought that I ought to have known her better after so many years and ought to have made myself enough of a favourite with her to make her sorry then.

When she gave me one cold parting kiss upon my forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone porch--it was a very frosty day--I felt so miserable and self-reproachful that I clung to her and told her it was my fault, I knew, that she could say good-bye so easily! "No, Esther!" she returned.

"It is your misfortune!" The coach was at the little lawn-gate--we had not come out until we heard the wheels--and thus I left her, with a sorrowful heart.

She went in before my boxes were lifted to the coach-roof and shut the door.

As long as I could see the house, I looked back at it from the window through my tears.