"My dearest Wentworth, I have often told you it is but my duty--a delightful one--to try and be a helpmate instead of hindrance to you; and I may say too during all our married life I have never seen an unkind look,--you have been my love and faithful lover in a way unhappily too rare." "Yes, we were made for each other, Ellen; they say marriages are made in heaven: I am sure ours was, for by my union with you I have won everything in this world and the next. I have lived to see and admire your silent example, lived to see its blessed fruits in my two sisters, lived to follow and value religion, and to feel the assurance that our hearts are bound not only now, but to all eternity in cords of everlasting love." "Give to God the praise, dearest Wentworth; if I have been the unworthy instrument of leading you from earthly dross to eternal and unchangeable riches, I have been _only_ the poor instrument, but this seems my happiness; to hear my best loved speak so is the bright answer of many, many prayers. I knew they would be answered. I felt sure you were mine both upon earth and in heaven!" "Ah, Ellen, it is in this one sees the reality of religion. What are rank, earthly honours, position, wealth, if only to be used or abused here? What are all to a dying man? Yes, it is one thing to talk of death, one thing to enjoy life, as if death existed not,--it is another to know our end is near, to feel we must soon lose all; leave the world naked as we came into it, tread out on empty space, quit our firm footing below! had we then no assurance that around us were the everlasting arms, what would all earthly joys do for us? but thanks to heaven, and to you for leading me to seek that treasure where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, I feel that if called to die this night I could die happy. There might be the pang mortal man must own when his breath forsakes him, there might be the human dread of the cold tomb, the pain of the wrench from those we love below, but my mind would be happy, happy in the thought I should soon see you again, and those I loved, and have darkly lost." "True, dearest, and earth has so little left us now, it seems as if we were called to think more on heaven! Every tie seems severed but one--our daughter. I would endure to live for her and for you, but certainly most of our dear ones are beyond the grave, and there my heart often soars too." "I have a strange presentiment, dearest Ellen, that I shall not long be spared to you. Since my brother's death I have felt the shadow of the tomb overshading me! Whether it was the awful scene of his self-destruction, or the air of the damp dungeon in which he was confined, I know not, but I have never felt the same man since. I think I shall soon go too!"