field, the very farm-house garden, once so bright, now lying deep in
snow. She began tremble in every limb.

"Why are we here? This is not our right road. Where are we going?"

"I did not mean to come this way, but we missed the train, and cannot
reach London tonight; so I thought we would post across country to
E____," naming a quiet cathedral town, "where you can rest, and go on
when or where you please. Will that do?"

"Oh yes."

"You are not dissatisfied? We could not help missing the
Train, you see."

"Oh no."

The quick, sharp, querulous answers--that last refuge of a fictitious
strength that was momentarily breaking down--he saw it all, this good
man, this generous, pitiful-hearted man, who knew what sorrow was,
and who for a whole year had watched her with the acuteness which
love alone teaches, especially the love which, coming late in life, had a
calmness and unselfishness which youthful love rarely possesses. The
sort of love which, as he had once quoted to her out of an American
book, could feel, deeply and solemnly, "that if a man really loves a
woman, he would not marry her for the world, were he not quite sure
he was the best person she could by any possibility marry"--that is, the
one who loved her so perfectly that he was prepared to take upon
himself all the burden of her future life, her happiness or sorrow, her
peculiarities, shortcomings, faults, and all.