The end of his contemplation and his deliberation came to this: She was beautiful, and she loved him, and his life was utterly wretched and lonely; so he determined on proving his gratitude by a sublime sacrifice.

Before the girl had lifted her face from the needlework over which she had bent to hide her blushes, Horatio Paget had asked her to be his wife.

Her emotion almost overpowered her as she tried to answer him; but she struggled against it bravely, and came to the sofa on which he lay and dropped upon her knees by his side.

The beggar-maid who was wooed by a king could have felt no deeper sense of her lover's condescension than that which filled the heart of this poor simple girl as she knelt by her mother's gentleman lodger.
"I--to be your wife!" she exclaimed.

"O, surely, sir, you cannot mean it ?" "But I do mean it, with all my heart and soul, my dear," answered the Captain.