He had asked her, and we know that he had been successful.

He had obtained her promise, and from that moment all his life had been changed for him.

Hitherto at Nethercoats his little smoking-room, his books, and his plants had been everything to him.

Now he began to surround himself with an infinity of feminine belongings, and to promise himself an infinity of feminine blessings, wondering much that he should have been content to pass so long a portion of his life in the dull seclusion which he had endured.

He was not by nature an impatient man; but now he became impatient, longing for the fruition of his new idea of happiness,--longing to have that as his own which he certainly loved beyond all else in the world, and which, perhaps, was all he had ever loved with the perfect love of equality.