It shall be the business of my life from this hour.

All my serious thoughts have been of her from the moment in which I first knew her.

They will be doubly hers henceforward." "How good and true you are!" Ellen Carley exclaimed admiringly; "and how you must have loved her! I guessed when you were here last that it was you to whom she was engaged before her marriage, and told her as much; but she would not acknowledge that I was right.

O, how I wish she had kept faith with you! how much happier she might have been as your wife!" "People have different notions of happiness, you see, Miss Carley," Gilbert answered with a bitter smile.

"Yes, you were right; it was I who was to have been Marian Nowell's husband, whose every hope of the future was bound up in her.