I think Marian is sensible enough to know the value of an honest man's heart." Gilbert quitted the Captain in a more hopeful spirit than that in which he had gone to the cottage that day.

It was only reasonable that this man should be the best judge of his niece's feelings.
Left alone, George Sedgewick paced the room in a meditative mood, with his hands thrust deep into his trousers-pockets, and his gray head bent thoughtfully.
"She must like him," he muttered to himself.

"Why should not she like him ?--good-looking, generous, clever, prosperous, well-connected, and over head and ears in love with her.

Such a marriage is the very thing I have been praying for.

And without such a marriage, what would be her fate when I am gone?
A drudge and dependent in some middle-class family perhaps--tyrannised over and tormented by a brood of vulgar children." Marian came in at the open window while he was still pacing to and fro with a disturbed countenance.
"My dear uncle, what is the matter ?" she asked, going up to him and laying a caressing hand upon his shoulder.