Lady Florence Eveleen Eleanore Olliffe Bell

“ And as on a summer's day to people sitting in a shaded room, the world beyond shut out, the opening of a door into the sunshine may reveal a sudden vista of light, of flowers shining in the sun, so to the two people who were awaiting Rachel's arrival she brought a sudden vision of youth, brightness, colour, hope, as she came swiftly in, smiling and confident, with the face and expression of one who had never come into the presence of either of these two companions without seeing her gladness reflected in the light of welcome that shone in their eyes. ”

“ Merton. Good Lord! What an escape! I can't think how it was I didn't die, when my horse pitched me off on to my head and left me senseless. I should have died if you hadn't found me, and no one would have been the wiser.
Thwaite. There's plenty dies over here and no one the wiser.
Merton. I daresay.
Thwaite. There's plenty of others that's alive.
Merton. I wonder you troubled to keep another in the world then, Mr Thwaite.
Thwaite. It was the gal. She would have it we ought to pick you up, but I was in a hurry with some sheep in the cart going to Banooga. ”

“ He had had one moment, as they came up into the garden and saw there were other people there, before Lady Chaloner had recognised them, to make up his mind as to what he would do. Then he had said to himself desperately that he would risk it. After all, he might be exaggerating the whole thing; Wentworth did not know, and so the others might not. Rendel had felt during the last hour one of those strange sudden lightenings of the burden of existence that for some unexplained reason come to our help without our knowing why. He was almost beginning to think life would be possible again. ”

“ Lucy. I do think Kitty is so boring.
Mrs. L. My dear child! How wrong to say such a thing of your cousin.
Lucy. But, mother, you always say I'm to tell the truth. So as she is boring, I must say so.
Mrs. L. It's wrong to be bored by people who are good. Kitty is so tidy, so careful about everything: so unlike you. You're so heedless I can't even send you to the village shop for me.
Lucy. Oh, mother do let me go to the shop for you. I'm sure I could.
Mrs. L. I do want two pennorth of pepper, but I can't trust you to get it. I'm sure you would lose the pennies.
Lucy. No, no. ”

“ It was when Rachel was seventeen that Lady Gore became helpless and dependent, and the girl suddenly found that their positions were in some ways reversed; it was she who had to take care of her mother, to inculcate prudence upon her, to minister incessantly to her daily wants; there was added to the daughter's love the yearning care that a loving woman feels for a helpless charge, and there was hardly room for anything else in her life. Rachel, fortunately for herself and for others, had no startling originality; no burning desire, arrived at womanhood, to strike out a path for herself. ”

“ You take things for granted; you like everybody; you believe in everybody.
Carteret. Well, my experience has shewn me that you come fewer croppers in life if you believe in people, than if you're suspicious of them. It may be an illusion, but that's my experience.
Rachel. I wonder?... And there is another great difference. Women—so many women—are cowards; afraid, always afraid.
Carteret. Afraid of what, you foolish creature?
Rachel. Of all sorts of things. I was full of terrors when I was a child. ”

“ Then Stamfordham's words rang in his ears: "I must tell my colleagues." It was a small fraction of the world in number, perhaps, that would thus know how it happened, but they were, to Rendel, the only people who mattered—the people, practically, in whose hands his own future lay. He realised now as he had never done before in what calm confidence he had in his inmost heart looked on that future, and most of all how much, how entirely he had always counted on Lord Stamfordham's good opinion of his integrity and worth. It was all gone. What should he do? How should he take hold of life now? ”

“ It is difficult to judge of any course of conduct entirely on its own merits, when it has a reflex action on ourselves. When Rendel before his marriage used to go to Prince's Gate and to see Rachel, absolutely oblivious of herself, hovering tenderly round her mother, watching to see that her father's wishes were fulfilled, that unselfish devotion and absorption in filial duty seemed to him the most entirely beautiful thing on this earth. ”

“ Rachel said. "It is a very good thing they're late, you can eat your breakfast in peace for once without knowing what has happened."
"That is not the proper spirit," said Rendel smiling, "for the wife of a future great man."
"The only thing is," said Rachel, "that if you did become a great man, I don't think I should be the sort of wife for you. I am very stupid about politics, don't you think so? I don't understand things properly."
"I think you are exactly the sort of wife I want," said Rendel, "and that is enough for me. That is the only thing necessary for you to understand. ”

“ The ultimate ground, the ultimate arbiter of their empire, is force."
"Empire!" said Sir William. "That is the cry! [Pg 107] In your greed for empire you lose sight of everything but the aggrandisement of a dominion already so immense as to be unwieldy."
"Still," said Rendel, "as we have this big thing in our hands, it is better to keep it there than let it drop and break to pieces."
"I don't wish to let it drop," said Gore. "I wish to be content to increase it by friendly intercourse with the world, by the arts of peace and civilisation, and not by destruction and bloodshed." ”

“ She was not a woman to let such a seed die for want of planting and watering. She asked Rendel to dinner to meet the Gores, she talked to Lady Gore about him, she it was who somehow arranged that he should go to call at Prince's Gate, and he finally grew into a habit of finding his way there with a frequency that surprised himself. Lady Gore subjugated him entirely by her sweet kindly welcome, and the interest with which she listened to him, until he found himself to his own astonishment telling her, as he sat by her sofa, of his hopes and fears and plans for the future. ”

“ Thrilled by the sight of his utterances in print, he determined in his secret soul to expand that article into a book. The secret was of course shared by his wife, who fervently believed in the yet unwritten masterpiece. The fact that in spite of the dearth of prominent men in his party, of men who had in them the stuff of a leader, that party had not turned to Gore in its need, aroused no surprise, no misgiving, in either his mind or that of his wife. It was simply in their eyes another step in that path of voluntary renunciation which he was treading for her sake. ”

“ Rachel answered simply.
"I agree with him," Rendel said, "that it would be just as difficult to get any idea of what human beings are about by looking down on them from a height, as it is for us to discover what insects are doing when we look down on them."
"Yes, imagine looking at that," said Rachel, pointing towards the drawing-room. "You would see people walking up and down and in and out for no reason, and jostling each other round and round."
"Yes," said Rendel. "How aimless it would look! Not more aimless than it is, after all," he added. ”

“ In the meantime Rendel, in a very different frame of mind from that of his father-in-law, or, indeed, from that of his own of the night before, filled with a buoyant thrill of expectation, with the sense that something was going to happen, that everything might be going to happen, was looking out into life as one who looks from a watch tower waiting on fortune and circumstances, waiting confident and well-equipped without a misgiving. ”

“ What can a man wish for more?"
"It sounds as though you had everything you could possibly want, certainly," said Rachel, smiling at him.
"I don't know," said Rendel, reflecting, "if it is that quite. The real happiness is to want everything you can possibly get. That is the best thing of all."
"And not so difficult, I should think," said Rachel.
"I am not sure," said Rendel. "I am not sure that it is quite an easy thing to have an ardent hold on life. Some people keep letting it down with a flop. ”