She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was⁠—anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.

“ I ,” observed a well-remembered voice, when I had bowed and murmured something, “have seen Mr. Copperfield before.”

The speaker was not Dora. No; the confidential friend, Miss Murdstone!