And she thought--oh, how fondly she thought!--of that honest, manly mein; of that true, untainted heart, which she felt sure, had never loved any woman but herself; of the warm, firm hand, carving its way thro' the world for her sake, and waiting patiently till it could openly clasp hers, and give her every thing it had won.
She would not have exchanged him.

Robert Lyon, with his penniless love, his half-hopeless fortunes, or maybe his lot of never ending care, for the "brawest bridegroom" under the sun.
Under this sun--the common, everyday winter sun of Regent and Oxford streets--she walked now as brightly and bravely as if there were no trouble before her, no painful meeting with Ascott, no horrid humiliation from which every womanly feeling in her nature shrunk with acute pain.

"Robert, my Robert!" she whispered in her heart, and felt him so near to her that she was at rest, she hardly knew why.
Possibly grand, or clever, or happy people who condescend to read this story may despise it, think it unideal, uninteresting; treating of small things and common people--"poor persons," in short.

I can not help it.

I write for the poor; not to excite the compassion of the rich toward them, but to show them their own dignity and the bright side of their poverty.