Henry Owgan

“ Some such was the half-spoken reflection of a man still young in years, but scathed and faded by storms of passion and suffering, who stood on a low balcony outside an open casement, looking down through the clear night air upon the slumbering town, and drinking in the mingled perfumes of the cool sea-breeze and the rich flowering plants that lay drooping at his feet ”

“ You should have been born a Sultan or a Kalif, George. You would make woman the slave of the Zenana. Your idea is that we are born to obey?”
“I believe so. To our sex belong the stormy emotions of existence—the struggle and the triumph—the ambition that spans the world—the doubts that poison every joy—the hyena thirst of knowledge that soars above the actual and the visible. ”

“ Her features were classic as those of the Ionian beauties of the old time, and her long raven hair streamed in thick braids from beneath the small embroidered cap of crimson and gold.
“Many women,” she said, “must have been conquered by your words, for they are resistless and fatal as the spell of the evil eye. ”

“ In addition to the gradual devastations of time, however, there were those committed by the late occupant of the dwelling, whose name and character were remembered with superstitious terror by the natives of the district: for they still trembled and spoke in whispers as they pointed to the spot where one of his enemies had fallen in an unwitnessed duel, or passed near a long stake fixed on the banks of the lake, where they said that he had dragged in his wife by the hair and drowned her. Every step, in short, around the abbey was on the scene of some dark tragedy ”