I told her outright that I did not think as she thought on these matters, but that she had made her choice, and I hoped it would be a happy one.
“I am sure of it. Now go to bed, and don't cry any more, there's a good girl, for there really is nothing to cry about. You shall have the very prettiest bridesmaid's dress I can afford, and Treherne Court will be such a nice house for you to visit at. Good night, Dora.”
Strange, altogether strange!
And writing it all down this morning, I feel it stranger than ever, still.
CHAPTER V. HIS STORY.
I will set down, if only to get rid of them, a few incidents of this day.
Trivial they are—ludicrously so—to any one but me: yet they have left me sitting with my head in my hands, stupid and idle, starting, each hour, at the boom of the bell we took at Sebastopol—starting and shivering like a nervous child.
Strange! there, in the Crimea, in the midst of danger, hardship, and misery of all kinds I was at peace, even happy: happier than for many years. I seemed to have lived down, and nearly obliterated from thought, that one day, one hour, one moment,—which was but a moment. Can it, or ought it, to weigh against a whole existence? or, as some religionists would tell us, against an eternity? Yet, what is time, what is eternity? And, what is man, measuring himself, his atom of good or ill, either done or suffered, against God?