He had been self-obliterating.

His love desired only to make her happy: most lovers desire that they themselves shall be made happy.

Because of the crime his father committed years ago--because of the shame of that hidden crime--he had tried the more to make himself a good citizen, and had formed the modest ambition of making one human being happy.

Always keeping this near him in past years, a supreme cheerfulness of heart had welled up out of his early sufferings and his innate honesty.

Hope had beckoned him on from year to year, until it seemed at last that the time had almost come when he might speak, might tell her all--his father's crime and the manner of his father's death; of his own devoted purpose in trying to expiate that crime by his own uprightness; and of his love for her.
Now, all in a minute, his horizon was blackened.