I gained the summit of the hill, and looked at the view which we had so often admired in the happier time. It was cold and barren⁠—it was no longer the view that I remembered. The sunshine of her presence was far from me⁠—the charm of her voice no longer murmured in my ear. She had talked to me, on the spot from which I now looked down, of her father, who was her last surviving parent⁠—had told me how fond of each other they had been, and how sadly she missed him still when she entered certain rooms in the house, and when she took up forgotten occupations and amusements with which he had been associated. Was the view that I had seen, while listening to those words, the view that I saw now, standing on the hilltop by myself? I turned and left it⁠—I wound my way back again, over the moor, and round the sandhills, down to the beach. There was the white rage of the surf, and the multitudinous glory of the leaping waves⁠—but where was the place on which she had once drawn idle figures with her parasol in the sand⁠—the place where we had sat together, while she talked to me about myself and my home, while she asked me a woman’s minutely observant questions about my mother and my sister, and innocently wondered whether I should ever leave my lonely chambers and have a wife and a house of my own?