The Captain told Mr.Fenton this in the course of their talk.
"I have not been able to afford so much as a visit to London for my darling," he said; "but I do not know that she is any the worse for her ignorance of the great world.

The grand point is that she should be happy, and I thank God that she has been happy hitherto." "I should be very ungrateful if I were not, uncle George," the girl said in a half whisper.
Captain Sedgewick gave a thoughtful sigh, and was silent for a little while after this; and then the talk went on again until the clock upon the chimney-piece struck the half-hour after ten, and Gilbert Fenton rose to say good-night.

"I have stayed a most unconscionable time, I fear," he said; "but I had really no idea it was so late." "Pray, don't hurry away," replied the Captain.

"You ought to help me to finish that bottle.

Marian and I are not the earliest people in Lidford." Gilbert would have had no objection to loiter away another half-hour in the bow-window, talking politics with the Captain, or light literature with Miss Nowell, but he knew that his prolonged absence must have already caused some amount of wonder at Lidford House; so he held firmly to his good-night, shook hands with his new friends, holding Marian Nowell's soft slender hand in his for the first time, and wondering at the strange magic of her touch, and then went out into the dreamy atmosphere of the summer night a changed creature.
"Is this love at first sight ?" he asked himself, as he walked homeward along the rustic lane, where dog-roses and the starry flowers of the wild convolvulus gleamed whitely in the uncertain light.