Why I've wanted, I mean, not to miss it." He bent on her a kind, comprehending face.

"You mustn't miss anything." He had got it, the pitch, and he could keep it now, for all he had needed was to have it given him.

The pitch was the happiness of his wife that was to be--the sight of that happiness as a joy for an old friend.
It was, yes, magnificent, and not the less so for its coming to him, suddenly, as sincere, as nobly exalted.

Something in Charlotte's eyes seemed to tell him this, seemed to plead with him in advance as to what he was to find in it.

He was eager--and he tried to show her that too--to find what she liked; mindful as he easily could be of what the friendship had been for Maggie.