She would fain have caught at the skirts of that departing time, and prayed it to return, and give her back what she had too little valued while it was yet in her possession. What a vain show Life seemed! How unsubstantial, and flickering, and flitting! It was as if from some aerial belfry, high up above the stir and jar of the earth, there was a bell continually tolling, ‘All are shadows!—all are passing!—all is past!

Oh, Mr. Thornton, I am not good enough!' 'Not good enough! Don't mock my own deep feeling of unworthiness.

Come! Poor little heart! Be cheery and brave. We'll be a great deal to one another, if we are thrown off and left desolate.

Margaret the Churchwoman, her father the Dissenter, Higgins the Infidel, knelt down together. It did them no harm.

How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?

For all his pain, he longed to see the author of it. Although he hated Margaret at times, when he thought of that gentle familiar attitude and all the attendant circumstances, he had a restless desire to renew her picture in his mind - a longing for the very atmosphere she breathed. He was in the Charybdis of passion, and must perforce circle and circle ever nearer round the fatal centre.

Nothing like the act of eating for equalizing men. Dying is nothing to it.