Stretton by Henry Kingsley

So Allan spent the two months with Ethel. Mrs. Maynard growing more and more certain every day that he was going to make a fool of himself, and Allan getting more and more certain that he was not.

I doubt whether a man of good disposition and high character like Allan Gray, is very unhappy under a hopeless passion. Men with a craze in their brain will go as far as to hang themselves, but in those cases I doubt the man's being in love at all in the sense I speak of. Such admiration is more physical than mental, I suspect. I have heard of more than one Colonel Dobbin.