It would be a kind of sin to accept so much and to give so little." "The love will come, Marian; I am sure that it will come." She shook her head playfully.
"What a darling match-making uncle it is!" she said, and then kissed him and ran away.
She thought of Gilbert Fenton a good deal during the rest of that day; thought that it was a pleasant thing to be loved so truly, and hoped that she might always have him for her friend.

When she went out to drink tea in the evening his image went with her; and she found herself making involuntary comparisons between a specimen of provincial youth whom she encountered at her friend's house and Mr.Fenton, very much to the advantage of the Australian merchant.
While Marian Nowell was away at this little social gathering, Captain Sedgewick and Gilbert Fenton sat under the walnut-trees smoking their cigars, with a bottle of claret on a little iron table before them.
"When I came back from India fourteen years ago on the sick-list," began the Captain, "I went down to Brighton, a place I had been fond of in my young days, to recruit.

It was in the early spring, quite out of the fashionable season, and the town was very empty.

My lodgings were in a dull street at the extreme east, leading away from the sea, but within sight and sound of it.

The solitude and quiet of the place suited me; and I used to walk up and down the cliff in the dusk of evening enjoying the perfect loneliness of the scene.