To no man did he talk of his love in such a strain as this; but there was a woman to whom he spoke of it; and though he could not joke on such a matter, the purport of what he said showed the same feeling.

To be finally rejected, and to put up with such rejection, would make him almost contemptible in his own eyes.
This woman was his sister, Mary Belton.

Something has been already said of this lady, which the reader may perhaps remember.

She was a year or two older than her brother, with whom she always lived, but she had none of those properties of youth which belonged to him in such abundance.

She was, indeed, a poor cripple, unable to walk beyond the limits of her own garden, feeble in health, dwarfed in stature, robbed of all the ordinary enjoyments of life by physical deficiencies, which made even the task of living a burden to her.