Her father had his empty glass in his hand. I saw him set it down, look at the picture she was so like, put his hand to his forehead, and shrink back in his elbow-chair.

“I’m an ’umble individual to give you her ’elth,” proceeded Uriah, “but I admire⁠—adore her.”

No physical pain that her father’s grey head could have borne, I think, could have been more terrible to me, than the mental endurance I saw compressed now within both his hands.

“Agnes,” said Uriah, either not regarding him, or not knowing what the nature of his action was, “Agnes Wickfield is, I am safe to say, the divinest of her sex. May I speak out, among friends? To be her father is a proud distinction, but to be her ’usband⁠—”