He was to be her husband! She was to have a gentleman for a husband; and such a gentleman! Out of such base trifles as a West-end tailor's coat and a West-end workman's boots may be engendered the purest blossom of womanly love and devotion.

Wisely may the modern philosopher cry that the history of the world is only a story of old clothes.

Mary Anne had begun by admiring the graces of Stultz and Hoby, and now she was ready to lay down her life for the man who wore the perishing garments.
* * * * * Miss Kepp obeyed her lover's behest; and it was only on the following day, when she and her mother were alone together in the dingy little kitchen below Captain Paget's apartments, that she informed that worthy woman of the honour which had been vouchsafed to her.

And thereupon Mary Anne endured the first of the long series of disappointments which were to arise out of her affection for the penniless Captain.

The widow was a woman of the world, and was obstinately blind to the advantages of a union with a ruined gentleman of fifty.