“I am no enthusiast,” he next averred,—­Rosa would have said, very unnecessarily—­“the tricks of sighing lovers are beyond—­or beneath—­my imitation.  I could not ‘write a sonnet to my mistress’ eyebrow,’ or move her to tearful pity by sounding declarations of my adoration of her peerless charms, and my anguish at the bare imagination of the possibility that these would ever be another’s.  But, so far as the earnest affection and sincere esteem of an honest man can satisfy the requirements of a good woman’s heart, yours shall be filled, Mabel, if you will be my wife.  I have admired you from the first day of our meeting.  For six months I have been truly attached to you, and seriously meditated this declaration.  Your brother is satisfied with the exhibit I have made of my affairs and my prospects, and sanctions my addresses.  I can maintain you more than comfortably, and it shall be one of the principal aims of my life to consult your welfare in all my plans for my own advancement.  I have been settled in the large and flourishing city of Albany about seven years, and—­ignoring the trammels of mock humility, let me say to you—­have, within that period, gained to a flattering extent the confidence of the most respectable portion of the community; have built up an excellent and growing business connection, and secured the entree of the best society there.  These are the pecuniary and social aspects of the alliance I propose for your consideration.  Through my sister, and by means of the intimate association into which her marriage with your brother has drawn you and myself, you have been enabled, within the twelvemonth that has elapsed since our introduction, one to the other, to learn whatever you wished to know with respect to my personal character, my tastes, temper, and habits.  It has given me heartfelt pleasure to discover that these are, in the main, analogous to your own.  I have built upon this similarity—­or harmony would be the better word—­sanguine hopes of our future happiness, should you see your way clear to accept my proffered hand, consent to link your future with mine.”

“I beg to lay the ’ouse in Walcot Square, the business and myself, before Miss Summerson, for her acceptance,” said magnanimous Mr. Guppy, thus clinching his declaration that “the image he had supposed was eradicated from his ’art was not eradicated.”

It was more in keeping with Rosa’s character than Mabel’s to recollect the comic scene in the book they had read together lately, but the latter did remember it at this instant, and despite the momentous issues involved in her immediate action, was strongly tempted to laugh in her wooer’s solemn face.

Then—­so abrupt and fearful are the transitions from the extremes of one emotion to another—­arose before her another picture.  As in a dissolving view, she beheld herself walking with Frederic Chilton in the moonlighted alleys of the garden; midsummer flowers blooming to the right and left, her head drooping, in shy happiness, as the lily-bell bows to shed its freight of dew; his face glowing with the ardor of verbal confession of that he had already sought to express by letter—­heard his fervent, pleading murmur, “Mabel! look up, my darling! and tell me again that you will not send me away beggared and starving.  I cannot yet believe in the reality of my bliss!”