But so unlike in many cases are the immediate consequences to those desired and expected, that it is hard for not a few to believe that he is anywhere looking after their fate--caring about them at all.

And the doubt would be a reasonable one, if the end of things was marriage.

But the end is life--that we become the children of God; after which, all things can and will go their grand, natural course; the heart of the Father will be content for his children, and the hearts of the children will be content in their Father.
Godfrey indulged one great and serious mistake in reference to Letty, namely, that, having learned the character of Tom through the saddest of personal experience, she must have come to think of him as he did, and must have dismissed from her heart every remnant of love for him.
Of course, he would not hint at such a thing, he said to himself, nor would she for a moment allow it, but nothing else could be the state of her mind! He did not know that in a woman's love there is more of the specially divine element than in a man's--namely, the original, the unmediated.

The first of God's love is not founded upon any merit, rests only on being and need, and the worth that is yet unborn.
The Redmains were again at Durnmelling--had been for some weeks; and Sepia had taken care that she and Godfrey should meet--on the footpath to Testbridge, in the field accessible by the breach in the ha-ha--here and there and anywhere suitable for a little detention and talk that should seem accidental, and be out of sight.

Nor was Godfrey the man to be insensible to the influence of such a woman, brought to bear at close quarters.