Agnes Giberne

“ If you should see Edred loving and seeking Dorothea Tracy, you know that one happiness which you wish for is not to be yours. You would know that the life you could choose is not to be your life. Dolly, some of us have to go through that pain, and, hard as it may seem, I think we are not the worse for it in the end; at least, we need not be. One has to learn, somehow, to fight and endure: and that may be as good a way as any other. I can't tell yet if that is to be your discipline; but if it is, you will not hate Dorothea Tracy. She has a right to be loved: and she would not be to blame. ”

“ An hour later as they crossed the moor, one or two sharp showers overtook them; and some fine effects in the way of contrasted brightness and shadow were to be seen. A close phalanx of low black clouds with fringed edges swept over the hills, and following persistently in their wake was one broad belt of sunshine.
“Like life,” George said musingly, as they stood to gaze. “Remember, Joan, if the clouds return after the rain, as return they often do, the sunlight comes after the clouds again. But one must have the commingling. Pure joy and pure sorrow are scarcely known to us in this life.” ”

“ Are we not one already in mind and heart? If you love—would you consent to separation for life, only for this?—only that yours is bluer blood than mine! You shall make of me what you will! My people shall not trouble you—that I can promise. It is you and I who love—just you and I! What has the rest of the world to do with us? Just you and I!—my Doris!—my darling! ”

“ Does the madre see? Is that why she minded so much? . . . No, I don't love Ethel. I don't care for her. I don't half like her. She rubs me up the wrong way, somehow. Has it been this? . . . Poor madre! Every one will pity her, and nobody will pity me! Hush—I will not have that come up! Unwomanly!—Contemptible—to give one's love where it is not wanted." Fulvia stamped her foot. "Nobody shall ever guess my folly! Anything rather than betray myself! Nigel—how Nigel would despise me, if he knew! And how I despise myself!"
She stood again before the glass, noting the flush which remained. ”

“ LETTICE, away in her western home, had no such comfort as Prue; no loving mother-arms to enfold her; no gentle mother-lips to kiss away heart-ache. Those who have never known this sweetest of all earthly comforts cannot realise the emptiness of not having it; and the grief of conscious loss is not theirs. But Lettice did sorely feel the need of some such love and sympathy.
She had comfort: the highest comfort: a love deeper than even mother-love; a tenderness exceeding even mother-tenderness ”

“ Perhaps, Laura, nothing can better convey to you the impression left on me, than to tell you what was my repeatedly recurring thought. “If I had to suffer martyrdom, in no form could it appear more attractive than by being thrown over Niagara!” To be launched into eternity, shrouded in that cascade of diamonds, would rouse such a thrilling sense of the beautiful and the sublime, that half one’s fears would be swallowed up in something almost like joy. It would seem ten times more horrible to be flung from a high tower on to the hard, cold earth. ”

“ My child is very lovely, Harvey— a strangely favoured being; and I am favoured in her." He gazed earnestly at the young man. "When you see Hermione you will understand. She is all sweetness—to me a being without fault. I never have to blame my Hermione, for I find nothing to blame. Yet she is natural, simple, girl-like; no forced hot-house plant. I do not fear to say too much of her, for indeed she surpasses all I could say. She is the sunshine of my old age. All who know her, love her as she well deserves to be loved. ”

“ Suddenly a wild chorus of shouts and yells broke out, coming nearer. Archie came to a standstill, listening. What could it mean?
Somebody hurt! A horse running away! These thoughts occurred to him first. He would have rushed forward to help, but for a moment, he could not tell whence the outcries proceeded, so full was the air of uproar.
The uproar swelled, drawing closer, shrieks mingling with deeper-toned shouts: and all at once Archie could distinguish words: "A MAD DOG! A MAD DOG!"
For a single instant Archie's impulse was to flee before so gruesome a peril. ”

“ It does seem sad that man, as the highest part of Nature, should not always speak to men of God; but too often he does not. So one naturally turns from human discord to the more true if lower music of things inanimate.
I love to lie upon the grass of a certain favourite bank, and there to lose myself in quiet studying of the mountain-outlines, the long winding of the Dale, the patches of autumn-red bracken on The Fell, the little streamlets coursing each hillside, the peaceful cloudland of sky above. ”

“ Those white cliffs along the coast were formed ages ago. But the ocean is working still, building still, piling grains of sand together still, heaping specks of mud together still, and laying shells, shells, shells, together still, in amounts beyond all reckoning.
Chalk-building went on in ages past; it goes on now; and doubtless it will go on in centuries to come.
Not only beyond reckoning, but beyond imagination, are the enormous multitudes of these creatures, which live and die in the ocean, forming their shells, and adding their skeletons to the ever-growing pile below. ”

“ One can picture the surprise that it must have been for those dear old people—when they were young—one day to be in blissful unconsciousness of anything unusual; the next day to wake up and find themselves over head and ears in a world of new sensations. But even then they never dreamt of tearing their new-found love into little bits, to examine its component parts. They had not come to an introspective and analytic age.
Cyril could no more have walked unconsciously into love with Jean—or with the other girl—than he could have strolled unconsciously into the middle of his deepest pond. ”

“ When Harvey Dalrymple asked her to marry him, it never even occurred to her to consider whether he were a good man, or what manner of principles he held. She only knew that she loved him, that to know of his love for her filled life with happiness, that she wanted nothing and cared for nothing in addition.
Yet in her secret self she did want, did care. For no purely human love can ever absolutely satisfy the heart which is made for higher things, and in the brightest floods of mere earth-sunshine the question must still arise—What lies beyond? ”

“ He who trusts must know from practical experience that the one whom he trusts is trustworthy. And whatever else is present, if trust fails everything fails; there is then no firm ground to stand upon; love sinks at once to a lower level.
Fulvia's own hand had cut away this firm ground from beneath her feet. In the main she was, as Nigel had always counted her, truthful and honourable; but one failure long persisted in had undone what went before. She might indeed never so fail again; but how could Nigel know? Where one cannot trust, there can be no security of happiness. ”

“ Equal to Ivor in height, gracefully built, every inch a soldier, with a figure and face alike faultless in outlines, he could not but draw attention. So young still in look and air that none would have guessed him to be already over forty in age, already a Lieutenant-General in rank, there was about him an extraordinary and commanding force; and while the large brilliant hazel eyes, under their dark arched brows, were brimming with laughter at Roy's comical imitation of Denham, their slightest glance was of a kind to search men's hearts, to enforce instant obedience. ”

“ If Doris succeeded, Maurice did not.
Reaching the small blue-grey piece of water, with its framework of jagged rocks and slender pines, they climbed to a shady spot, and sat long in silence, which neither was in haste to interrupt. Upon each stole a strong consciousness that, shared with the other, life offered the best that it had to give, little besides being essential for happiness. But, while this consciousness pervaded the whole being of the man, dominating his every faculty, it rested rather as a ray of brightness upon the surface of the girl's mind; not less genuine, but less deep. ”

“ I'd sooner see you in your grave, Kitty, than give you over to him. Mind, I say it, and I mean it," says she.
And then she touched my hand in a kind-like way, and said—
"It won't be long. You'll soon leave caring. There can't be love without there's respect."
"I do love him," I sobbed. "And oh—I don't know how to bear it!"
"Catch me, when I was a girl, saying I loved a man before he'd said he loved me!" I heard mother mutter to herself. "Whatever has come over the girls nowadays! Not a scrap of proper self-respect." ”

“ One more heavy sorrow had to come first; one more sharp blow upon the golden staff of her Will. Many a blow had fallen since she wrote her little book, The Giant-Killer; many dear ones had been called away by death. And now the summons was going forth for the dearest of all; the sister-friend, who from very infancy had been one with herself. No shadow had ever fallen on their love one for another. Before the close of 1892 the shadow of death was to fall across it, leaving Charlotte Tucker more lonely in heart than she had ever been before. ”

“ Lettice walked by his side, and then stood dreamily outside the throng into which he plunged. She had a semi-bewildered sensation, for crowds were new and somewhat overpowering after years of country life. All through the earlier part of the journey a load of distress had pressed her down. How to endure the secret let out by Keith; how to bear with patience the false accusation from which at any moment she might clear herself; how not to loathe Theodosia with a detestation which should darken all her spiritual life;—these problems had been of absorbing interest. ”

“ Nearer was the bare and rocky Blümlisalp-stock, cold and grim in the twilight, rising abruptly from the névé of the glacier.
Long lingered the mysterious radiance of the afterglow on the spurs and slopes of those great Gothic peaks, until the last filmy veil, sea-green in hue, faded before the onslaught of night. Then attendant stars began to twinkle in the vault over the Blümlisalphorn, forming a little crown above his head.
The two girls held their breath, clasping hands under the rugs.
"It's too lovely," murmured Amy. "What a splendid world ours is! ”

“ Nigel made no response.
"Tell me! I will know! One word only! Ethel—or Fulvia! Which is it? Which is dearest to you?"
Still he did not speak. Fulvia leant forward, searching his face.
"Ethel—or me! Which?"
"Is there need for this? Is it right?" asked Nigel slowly. "Can you not trust me, when I say that my life shall be yours?"
"I would trust you for the life, but not for the love," she said. "You can promise the one; you cannot promise the other. Only love of a kind, at least, a poorer sort. Think—have pity!—Could you marry one who loved another more? ”

“ Jean had been surrounded from babyhood by a far more embracing environment, had been compelled habitually to march in the face of her own inclinations, had had to wrestle through countless oppositions. Instead of finding all difficulties cleared away from her path, she had been trained to meet and grapple with them. The resisting vigour of her growth was gradually shaping a woman's character of fine outlines, pure, straightforward, self-denying—such a growth as could never have resulted from a spoilt and cosseted existence. ”

“ The black eyes glowered at Dulcie, and the black brows frowned more heavily.
“Georgie, she’s a darling,” cried the forgiving Dulcie. “Just see what lovely eyes! She’s as dark as a gypsy. And how nicely the little pet is dressed! She isn’t a poor child, Georgie. She must belong to a lady. But fancy leaving her here! Why, she might have fallen into the river. What a mercy we came back this way! Now, you little dear, do tell me; what is your name?”
“Whom do you belong to, my dear?” asked George, as Dulcibel’s most winning smile met only with another scowl from the rich dark eyes and brows. ”

“ Little dreamt Ivor, glad in the thought of Moore's confidence, Moore's wish, that never, never again in this life, would he stand in the presence of the man who was to him more than the whole world beside—in a sense more than even Polly, passionately as he loved Polly.
His feeling for John Moore partook, indeed, rather of the nature of idolatry. The love of man for man is so distinct from the love of man for woman, that the one cannot be compared with the other, the one cannot interfere with the other. ”

“ I have found that middle age has its deep joys, as well as early youth its sparkling ones. Sometimes I ask myself,—“Now, in my present position, if I had no pleasure in religion, if everything connected with that were cut off, what would be left me?—what would life be to me?” O Leila, what a tasteless, what a bitter thing! We want delights that will not grow old, that will never pall, that will be just as fresh and lovely at eighty as at eighteen. Religion is not merely, as some seem to fancy, to prepare us for death, but to be the happiness of life. ”