In the heart which a single passion, the purest of which men and women are capable, had engrossed so long, Nature, who, expel her as you will, will still return, had won her right and carved her kingdom.
And she knew that it was well with her--whatever the upshot of last night.

To be lonely no more; to be no longer the protector, but the protected; to know the comfort of the strong arm as well as of the following eye, the joy of receiving as well as of giving; to know that, however dark the future might lower, she had no longer to face it alone, no longer to plan and hope and fear and suffer alone, but with _him_--the sense of these things so mingled with her gratitude on her mother's account that the new affection, instead of weakening the old became as it were part of it; while the old stretched onwards its pious hand to bless the new.
If Claude did not read all this in her eyes, and in that one word "Content ?" he read so much that never devotee before relic rose more gently or more reverently to his feet.

Because all was his he would take nothing.

"As I stand by you, may God stand by me," he said, still holding her hands in his, and with the table between them.
"I have no fear," she replied in a low voice.

"Yet--if you fail, may He forgive you as fully as I must forgive you.