This proved to be one Mr Jasper Milvain, also a man of letters.

Mr Milvain was glad to meet Reardon, whose books he had read with decided interest.
'Really,' exclaimed Mrs Yule, 'I don't know how it is that we have had to wait so long for the pleasure of knowing you, Mr Reardon.

If John were not so selfish he would have allowed us a share in your acquaintance long ago.' Ten weeks thereafter, Miss Yule became Mrs Reardon.
It was a time of frantic exultation with the poor fellow.

He had always regarded the winning of a beautiful and intellectual wife as the crown of a successful literary career, but he had not dared to hope that such a triumph would be his.

Life had been too hard with him on the whole.
He, who hungered for sympathy, who thought of a woman's love as the prize of mortals supremely blessed, had spent the fresh years of his youth in monkish solitude.