—all the romance of our engagement put away upon a shelf, to rust—no one to please but one another—one another to please, for life.

She was exactly the same as ever, and the same immortal butterflies hovered over her cap.

A glimpse of the river through a dull gateway, where some waggons were housed for the night, seemed to arrest my feet.

It is not my purpose, in this record, though in all other essentials it is my written memory, to pursue the history of my own fictions.

I never saw a man so hot in my life. I tried to calm him, that we might come to something rational; but he got hotter and hotter, and wouldn’t hear a word.

A fearful cry followed the word. I paused a moment, and looking in, saw him supporting her insensible figure in his arms.

And Mrs. Gummidge took his hand, and kissed it with a homely pathos and affection, in a homely rapture of devotion and gratitude, that he well deserved.

I saw, in my aunt’s face, that she began to give way now, and Dora brightened again, as she saw it too.

I try to stay my tears, and to reply, ‘Oh, Dora, love, as fit as I to be a husband!’

‘Now’s the day, and now’s the hour,
See the front of battle lower,
See approach proud EDWARD’S power—
Chains and slavery!

‘Good-bye for ever. Now, my dear, my friend, good-bye for ever in this world.

From the first moment of her dark eyes resting on me, I saw she knew I was the bearer of evil tidings.

It was, to conceal what had occurred, from those who were going away; and to dismiss them on their voyage in happy ignorance. In this, no time was to be lost.

I have often remarked—I suppose everybody has—that one’s going away from a familiar place, would seem to be the signal for change in it.

‘You will find her,’ pursued my aunt, ‘as good, as beautiful, as earnest, as disinterested, as she has always been.

This sentiment gave unbounded satisfaction—greater satisfaction, I think, than anything that had passed yet.

She did not once show me any change in herself. What she always had been to me, she still was; wholly unaltered.

I had advanced in fame and fortune, my domestic joy was perfect, I had been married ten happy years.

And now my written story ends. I look back, once more—for the last time—before I close these leaves.

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