Someone has said that the man most assured of his own truthfulness is not usually truthful; and in the same sense it is true that the man most positive in trusting his own senses is not usually reliable.

Alec Trenholme flagged in his search; a most unpleasing doubt came to him as to whether he had seen what he thought he saw and was not now playing hide-and-seek with the rosy evening sunbeams among these bushes, driven by a freak of diseased fancy.

He was indeed provoked to a degree almost beyond control, when, in a last effort of search through the dense shrubbery, he skirted the fence of Captain Rexford's nearest field, and there espied Sophia Rexford.
Those people are happy who have found some person or thing on earth that embodies their ideal of earthly solace.

To some it is the strains of music; to some it is the interior of church edifices; to the child it is his mother; to the friend it is his friend.

As soon as Alec Trenholme saw this fair woman, whom he yet scarcely knew, all the fret of his spirit found vent in the sudden desire to tell her what was vexing him, very much as a child desires to tell its troubles and be comforted..