He found a warm welcome at the cottage from the Captain, who heartily approved of the course he was taking, and was full of hopefulness about the future.

“A few months more or less can make little difference,” he said, when Gilbert was lamenting the postponement of his wedding.  “Marian will be quite safe in her old uncle’s care; and I do not suppose either of you will love each other any the less for the delay.  I have such perfect confidence in you, Gilbert, you see; and it is such a happiness to me to know that my darling’s future is in the hands of a man I can so thoroughly trust.  Were you reduced to absolute poverty, with the battle of life to fight all over again, I would give you my dear girl without fear of the issue.  I know you are of the stuff that is not to be beaten; and I believe that neither time nor circumstance could ever change your love for her.”

“You may believe that.  Every day makes her dearer to me.  I should be ashamed to tell you how bitterly I feel this parting, and what a desperate mental struggle I went through before I could make up my mind to go.”

Marian came into the room in the midst of this conversation.  She was very pale, and her eyes had a dull, heavy look.  The bad news in Gilbert’s letter had distressed her even more than he had anticipated.

“My darling,” he said tenderly, looking down at the changed face, with her cold hand clasped in his own, “how ill you are looking!  I fear I made my letter too dismal, and that it frightened you.”

“Oh no, no.  I am very sorry you should have this bad fortune, Gilbert, that is all.”

“There is nothing which I do not hope to repair, dear.  The losses are not more than I can stand.  All that I take to heart is the separation from you, Marian.”

“I am not worth so much regret,” she said, with her eyes fixed upon the ground, and her hands clasping and unclasping each other nervously.

“Not worth so much regret, Marian!” he exclaimed.  “You are all the world to me; the beginning and end of my universe.”

She looked a little brighter by-and-by, when her lover had done his best to cheer her with hopeful talk, which cost him no small effort in the depressed state of his mind.  The day went by very slowly, although it was the last which those two were to spend together until Gilbert Fenton’s return.  It was a hopelessly wet day, with a perpetual drizzling rain and a leaden-gray sky; weather which seemed to harmonise well enough with the pervading gloom of Gilbert’s thoughts as he stood by the fire, leaning against an angle of the mantelpiece, and watching Marian’s needle moving monotonously in and out of the canvas.

The Captain, who led an easy comfortable kind of life at all times, was apt to dispose of a good deal of his leisure in slumber upon such a day as this.  He sat down in his own particular easy-chair, dozing behind the shelter of a newspaper, and lulled agreeably by the low sound of Gilbert and Marian’s conversation.