I have had no thought for any one save myself.

I have been cruel to neglect you as I have." "Do not blame yourself," she sighed.

"Your anxiety for your wife and children outweighs every other consideration." "But when I think how kind and how gentle you have been throughout all these years, how, when the fever burned my brow, it was your soft hand which cooled it and nursed me back to life and reason, and how I have neglected and forgotten you, I feel I have been selfish.

Surely you are an angel whom God hath sent me in these hours of loneliness." His natural impulse was to embrace the heroic woman; but he restrained such unholy emotions, and she, with her heart overflowing, sat weeping for joy.
In order to change the subject, he said: "Blanche; I have thought that the time has come to explore the peak of Snow-Top." (Snow-Top was the name they had given the tallest mountain in the valley.) "It is the loftiest peak on the island, and from it we might see other islands and continents, and with this glass, perchance, we might get a view of a distant sail." The exploration of this mountain had been the pet scheme for years.

The sides were steep and the ascension difficult.