‘It was in this very room I was lodged something like five years ago. It was at this very window I used to sit at night, weaving Heaven knows what dreams of a future. I was very much in love in those days, and a very honest and loyal love it was. I wanted to be very great, and very gallant, and distinguished, and above all, very rich; but only for _her_, only that _she_ might be surrounded with every taste and luxury that became her, and that she should share them with me. I knew well she was better than me--better in every way: not only purer, and simpler, and more gentle, but more patient, more enduring, more tenacious of what was true, and more decidedly the enemy of what was merely expedient. Then, was she not proud? not with the pride of birth or station, or of an old name and a time-honoured house, but proud that whatever she did or said amongst the tenantry or the neighbours, none ever ventured to question or even qualify the intention that suggested it. The utter impossibility of ascribing a double motive to her, or of imagining any object in what she counselled but the avowed one, gave her a pride that accompanied her through every hour of life. ‘Last of all, she believed in _me_--believed I was going to be one day something very famous and distinguished: a gallant soldier, whose very presence gave courage to the men who followed him, and with a name repeated in honour over Europe. The day was too short for these fancies, for they grew actually as we fed them, and the wildest flight of imagination led us on to the end of the time when there would be but one hope, one ambition, and one heart between us.