done.

He went every day to the cottage, and he bore himself in no manner like a
rejected lover. He was indeed very hopeful as to the issue of his wooing.
He knew that Marian Nowell's heart was free, that there was no rival
image to be displaced before his own could reign there, and he thought
that it must go hard with him if he did not win her love.

So Marian saw him every day, and had to listen to the Captain's praises
of him pretty frequently during his absence. And Captain Sedgewick's talk
about Gilbert Fenton generally closed with a regretful sigh, the meaning
of which had grown very clear to Marian.

She thought about her uncle's words and looks and sighs a good deal in
the quiet of her own room. What was there she would not do for the love
of that dearest and noblest of men? Marry a man she disliked? No, that
was a sin from which the girl's pure mind would have recoiled
instinctively. But she did like Gilbert Fenton--loved him perhaps--though
she had never confessed as much to herself.

This calm friendship might really be love after all; not quite such love
as she had read of in novels and poems, where the passion was always
rendered desperate by the opposing influence of adverse circumstances and
unkind kindred; but a tranquil sentiment, a dull, slow, smouldering
fire, that needed only some sudden wind of jealousy or misfortune to fan
it into a flame.

She knew that his society was pleasant to her, that she would miss him
very much when he left Lidford; and when she tried to fancy him
reconciled to her rejection of him, and returning to London to transfer