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294 "I would not touch it without you, Glory." She sighed. "Oh, George, George! to think how happy we might have been!"

"We may be. Glory."

"I do not see how that is possible. I have no more any hopes, but it is a great pleasure to me to see you and to hear you talk. I think of old days and old dreams of happiness."

"Why, Glory! with three hundred a year we might have lived as gentlefolks, doing nothing. We might have bought a little house and garden just anywhere, at the other end of England, in Scotland, or where you liked, away from all ugly sights and memories." "I had no ugly memories in the old days," she said sorrowfully. "I suppose not. But you have now. My Glory! how delightful it would be to cast all the horrible past away like a bad dream; all the past from when I was pressed into the service, to now—to drop it all out of memory as though it never had been, and to take up the story of life from that interruption." "Oh, George!" She trembled and gave one great sob, that shook her. "How we should live to one another, live in one another, and love one another! Why, Glory! we should not care for any others to come and disturb us, we should be so happy—"

She covered her face.

"On three hundred a year," he went on. "That is a beautiful sum. I suppose you need not live here on it: you might live where you liked on the money. It is not laid out on land in Wyvenhoe? "No, no." "You might take, let us suppose, a cottage by Plymouth Harbour. I have been there; it is a lovely spot, where you would see ships of all sorts sailing by; and just draw your money and live at ease."

"I suppose so."

"And nobody there would know you, whence you came, and what your history. They would not care to ask. That