All the world is ours, my darling, except this little corner of Midlandshire. Great ships are waiting to waft us away to far Southern shores, and tropical paradises, and deep unfathomable forests. All the earth is organized for our happiness. The money that has been so useless to me until now shall have a new use henceforward, for it shall be dedicated to your pleasure. Do you remember opening your eyes very wide the other day, Isabel, and crying out that you would like to see Rome, and poor Keats's grave, and the Colosseum,--Byron's Colosseum,--where the poetic gladiator thought of his wife and children, eh, Izzie? I made such a dream out of that little childish exclamation. I know the balcony in which we will sit, darling, after dark nights, in carnival time, to watch the crowd in the streets below, and, on one grandest night of all, the big dome of St. Peter's shining like a canopy of light, and all the old classic pediments and pillars blazing out of the darkness, as in a city of living fire. Isabel, you cannot have been ignorant of the end to which our fate was chaffing us; you must have known that I should sooner or later say what I have said to-day." "Oh, no, no, no!" cried Mrs. Gilbert, despairingly, "I never thought that you would ask me to be more to you than I am now: I never thought that it was wicked to come here and meet you. I have read of people, who by some fatality could never marry, loving each other, and being true to others for years and years--till death sometimes; and I fancied that you loved me like that: and the thought of your love made me so happy; and it was such happiness to see you sometimes, and to think of you afterwards, remembering every word you had said, and seeing your face as plainly as I see it now. I thought, till yesterday, that this might go on for ever, and never, never believed that you would think me like those wicked women who run away from their husbands." "And yet you love me?" "With all my heart."