This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1878 Excerpt: …calmness, her serenity, her happiness, were torture to him, and yet, if she loved me, he thought once, God knows how much harder it would have been–now I bear it all alone. Yes! and bore it as men like him do bear the burdens that meet them on the highroad of life–grew a little older, sterner, graver, and had a worried look that fidgeted Aunt Dora, who had taken him long ago into her soft old heart. He has positive crow’s feet, my dear, she said to Marjory solemnly. Nonsense, Aunt D., she answered. He does not change a bit. Why, you will be accusing me of white hairs and wrinkles next. Mr. Ffarington was not a very young man, you see, and he had not wasted his heart on every pretty face he had met–so the grand passion of his life made shipwreck of everything. He had lost more in Marjory than his first love–he had lost a home, and all the rest and comfort that a home implied. He was an atom again, tossed hither and thither on a tempestuous sea–all the lonelier for the glimpse of heaven that he had had–and lost. It was evening again; Aunt Dora, knitting in the fireside corner, was bickering with Lord Gilmour on some abstruse question of politics. Marjory was sitting apart, sometimes upholding Aunt Dora with laughing vehemence, more often turning her quiet face to a little table drawn up under the gaslight, where Ffarington and Joe were fighting out their daily battle of chess. Her eyes had a treacherous habit of turning like steel to a magnet, to any place where Ffarington might be. Lord Gilmour is deteriorating your political morals, said Joe suddenly. Come here, Marjory. He did not turn his eyes from the board, but he stretched his hand out backwards, and touched her d…