Anne O'Hagan

“ Are you still afraid of opening an old wound by seeing her?"
"It isn't exactly that," answered Torringford, painstakingly accurate. "The old feeling was pretty well starved out, I think, before I came back. But I'm afraid of a new one. The man—he is a coarse brute, isn't he? And when I think of her, subjected to his vulgarities all these years, hurt every hour by his stupidities, jarred by his ill-breeding, disgusted by his lack of common honor—when I think of what she has been through, Martha, I am afraid to see her. I am afraid of pitying her too much." ”

“ Jealousy, that outlives love and simulates passion, that stirs the slight embers of a trivial emotion to a sudden final burst of flame, sprang up in Susan. Often as she had prepared herself for the announcement of Hardaker's marriage, the reality found her totally unready. It was as though some new substance had been thrown among the inchoate uncertainties of her heart and had crystallized them. She burned with misery and jealousy. Therefore she loved Hardaker. Therefore she had no feeling at all for Willitson. ”

“ Barney Nolan looked on with apoplectic rage; he had a crude respect for Margaret's notions and admiration for her very follies; but once or twice his impatience and disgust overleaped the restraints his respects imposed, and he besought her to divorce the brute.
"It's not for me own sake I ask it," he assured her truthfully. "I'll never say the word 'marry' to ye once. Only get rid of him. Your life's not safe. An' this I tell ye. If anything happens to you through him, I'll kill him, an' it'll be murder on your soul!"
But Margaret shook her stubborn head. ”

“ She saw Westley reach his level of weak self-indulgence and indolence. On all their calamities she fed her malevolence, but she could never sate it. In the desolation of the far countryside there were no distractions. No new tenderness ever came to soften her grim, passionate sense of injury. Each day she awoke to the sight of her rival's house across the field and the road, each day she saw the signal from her rival's hearth-fire flutter in the air. And no wretchedness or disaster that could befall the woman and the man seemed great enough to satisfy her consuming hatred. ”

“ It was not a social lapse to be seen at Curate's. McCready's own gray-haired wife and his young dryad of a daughter had sat under his bristling protection, and had recognized only gaiety and glitter in the scene. But Miss Crystal had had no such chaperonage. Mr. Crawford Duncan could not be esteemed by even the most casual and innocent-eyed of observers, a well-chosen companion for a young woman. To McCready, who knew, as all the town did, his standing as a roué of parts, a libertine of attractions even more potent than his reputation, the sight had been painful. ”

“ Beyond the village the land thrusts of a long, rocky promontory into the sea. In her youth Bridget had been wont to watch from its uttermost point for the return of the fleet, and this morning she had an irresistible yearning for the spot. She made her way through the town, past the gay and splendid summer settlement that by beyond it, out to her old lookout. There Bianca Greeley, reading under a green-lined umbrella among the rocks, saw her. When she had looked her at her a little while she went softly away without making her presence known to Bridget. ”

“ Moon and sea, waiting earth and seed and blossom, night and sweetness and mystery, and the sudden joy of her own heart, were all one.
Then she became aware of another sound, harmonious with the spring evening—a laugh that was a blossom, a sigh that was a moonbeam, a word that was as gentle as the spent wave upon the beach. She paused abruptly—she had come to the arbor-vitæ hedge at the end of the grounds. Outside lay the highroad above the beach. She listened. The tender murmur went on. The keen odor of tobacco stole through the air. The shameless Nora—no, the happy, the blessed Nora! ”

“ The secret panel that some old artificer in woods had pleased himself to make two centuries before slid back, and the past that Miss Torrington had arranged her whole life to ignore fell forward in a packet of letters and papers.
Her own picture was there, showing a face as proud as the one Hollywood knew, but brilliant with an ardor and a sweetness that the college had never seen. The man's face that had lain against it in the recess was eager, winning; the young head was poised debonairly as if its owner had set forth to conquer the world with a laugh and a lute and a rose ”