T. W. Speight

“ Yes, a lonely, childless old man is Sir Gilbert, but still carrying himself bravely before the world, as if in defiance of all the blows a cruel fate has aimed at him, and still retaining a large measure of his old irritability of temper and imperiousness of manner. Would it be too much to wonder whether his heart is ever touched with compunction, or regret, when his eyes chance to rest on a certain tablet above the family pew—that pew now empty of all but himself—which professes to record the death of his firstborn? ”

“ A wild hurricane of wind and rain was beating furiously over land and sea. Utterly regardless of the storm, Lionel lay down at full length on the short, wet turf, and shading his eves with his hands, peered down into the black gulf below. It was a dangerous thing to do, but in the excitement of the moment all sense of personal fear was forgotten. He waited for the flashes; but when they came they showed him nothing save the wild turmoil of the rising tide as it dashed itself in fury against the huge boulders with which the beach was thickly strewn. ”

“ For a minute I stood looking at it. In the intense silence the beating of my heart was painfully audible. Grasping the banister with one hand, I went down stairs backwards, step by step, and so regained the sanctuary of my own room.
I scarcely know in what terms to describe, or how to make sufficiently clear, the strange sort of fascination there was for me in those nightly rambles--in living perpetually on the edge of a mystery. While daylight lasted the feeling slumbered within me; I could even take myself to task for wanting to pry into a secret that evidently in nowise concerned me. ”

“ But indeed, dear Lady Dudgeon, I am in no wise fitted for a life of fashionable pleasure. My tastes are too homely. Life seems to me far too real, far too earnest, to be frittered away in a perpetual round of balls and parties, of morning calls and drives in the Park. When I think of the poverty and wretchedness that I see on every side of me, every time I stir out of doors, and then of all those useless thousands that are said to be mine, I feel ashamed of myself, and think, with sorrow, how utterly I am living for myself alone. Oh, Lady Dudgeon! ”

“ The whole neighborhood swarmed with life--but such life! Could Hermia ever forget the dream of baleful faces which passed like a procession before her that evening; some scowling and sinister, some leering, some with an ape-like grin upon them, and others verging on the vacancy of an idiot's, with here and there one bearing the impress of a wickedness so unfathomable that the girl could but shudder and veil her eyes? "But the children--oh, my dears, the little children!" as she said afterwards, when recounting her experience to Uncle John and Aunt Charlotte, her blue eyes flushed with tears. ”

“ Deceived by the silence in the room, believing all danger to be at an end, and cramped in every limb from standing so long in one position without moving, Lionel Dering touched the spring, pushed open the false back of the wardrobe, and prepared to emerge from his hiding-place. The first object that met his startled gaze was the terror-stricken face of Sergeant Tilley, who, seated on the extreme edge of the sofa, was gazing at him as though he were some unsubstantial ghost come to revisit the pale glimpses of the moon. ”

“ Oh, Anna, Anna, where are your eyes, that you cannot see through this shallow, selfish pretender--a cad at heart, if ever there was one--who cares no more for you than for the flower in his buttonhole, who seeks you only for your money, and who would break your heart when once he had made you his wife, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow morning! ”

“ Happily, or unhappily, in such crises of everyday life we have no choice save to eat our own hearts, and drink our own tears, and wear the mask of comedy to the world, while hiding that other mask of tragedy under our robe, which we venture to don only when we are in secret and alone.
Captain Ducie, behind the mask of comedy which he presented to the world, hid a heart that in a few short hours had become surcharged with gall, and that would never again, however long his life might be, be entirely free from bitterness. ”

“ Love to me is existence itself--for what is life without love?"
"What a dreadful person! We might all have been murdered in our beds!" said Lady Dudgeon in a loud aside, as she felt in her pocket for her smelling-salts.
"Matthew!" said Olive, passionately, advancing a step nearer her cousin, "you have bid me begone, and I know that there is nothing left for me but to obey. All is over between us. I played for a heavy stake, and I have lost it. I leave you now, never to see you again. I go forth into the world--whither, I neither know nor care. ”

“ On the first and second occasions Burgo lay still and made no sign, but the third time he heard the footsteps on the stairs, followed by the faint creak of the sliding panel, impelled by a sudden impulse, he put out his hand, grasped his boot, and aimed it as straight as he could in the dark at the aperture in the door. There was a muttered exclamation--or execration--in a man's voice, and then a sound of retreating footsteps. Burgo broke into a burst of genuine laughter. ”

“ By the time the turret clock struck ten, Everard would be strolling back through the park in the direction of his rooms, with no company save a cigar and his own thoughts. At such seasons, with the fresh night air blowing about him, with the stars raining down sweet influences upon him, and with the huge ghost-like trees to sentinel him on his way, whither ought a young man’s thoughts to wing their flight save to the one fair being, fairer to him than all the world beside, who holds captive his heart, a willing prisoner! ”

“ I ought to have told you years ago—ay—before you ever grew to be a man. But I loved you so, and had such pride in you, that I couldn’t bear the thought of telling you, and it’s only now when I’m on my deathbed that the secret forces itself from me. But it will go no farther, never you fear that. No living soul but you will ever hear it from my lips; and you have only got to keep your own lips tightly shut, and you will live and die as Kester St. George. ”

“ Swiftly the murmur grew, growing and swelling with every moment, till it swelled into a mighty roar from a thousand throats. Then, all at once, there was a flashing of lights, and the trampling of innumerable feet, and three fire-engines went thundering past with yells, and shouts, and hoarse, inarticulate cries from a huge mob that followed hard and fast behind. Lionel stood back to let this crowd of desperadoes pass,—when all at once, among them, but not of them—borne helplessly along by the press from which he was struggling in vain to free himself, he saw his cousin, Kester St. George. ”

“ The plant grows more and more beautiful under the sweet influence that has been brought to bear upon it, and repays the sunshine with its most fragrant blossoms. In such like was Janet's young life nourished and enriched by the love that existed between her and Sister Agnes. Her inner life developed itself unconsciously; her heart grew in wisdom, and all the finer qualities of her nature began to unfold themselves one by one as delicate leaves unfold themselves in the sun. ”

“ I like solitude, but I must have some one to share it with me. The sweetest solitude is that where two people, whose tastes and sympathies are in accord, shut themselves out from the rest of the world (as you and I are shut out on this silent highway) to find in the society of each other a truer and more complete satisfaction than in aught else this earth can afford."
"Is not that a rather selfish view to take of life and its duties?" asked Eleanor. ”

“ I was given over to unseen powers, viewless, that dwell in space, of which we have ordinarily no human cognition. At such moments as these, and I have gone through many of them, I am no longer the Janet Holme of everyday life. I am lifted up and beyond my ordinary self. I obey a law whose beginning and whose ending I am alike ignorant of: but I feel that it is a law and not an impulse. I am led blindly forward, but I go unresistingly, feeling that there is no power left in me save that of obeying.
Did I push open the door of the secret room, or was it opened for me by unseen hands? ”

“ The light faded out of Gerald Brooke's eyes; a death-like pallor crept over his face; lie could scarcely command his voice as for the second time he asked: "What is it that I am called upon to do?"
"The Supreme Tribunal have decreed that a certain individual shall suffer the penalty of death. You are the person drawn by lot to carry out the sentence."
"They would make an assassin of me?--Never!"
"You are bound by your oath to carry out the behests of the Tribunal, be they what they may."
"No oath can bind a man to become a murderer." ”

“ Conroy seemed all at once to have lost his speech. Neither of them had much to say, but to both the silence exhaled a subtle sweetness. There are moments when words seem a superfluity--almost on impertinence. To live, to breathe--to feel that beside you is the living, breathing presence of the one supremely loved, is all that you ask for. It is well, perhaps, that such sweetly dangerous moments come so seldom in a lifetime.
They left the park by a wicket, took a winding footway through the plantation beyond, and reached the sand-hills, where they sat down for a few moments. ”

“ I came at last to cling to the narrow walls that had been my home for so long a time, as a limpet clings to its boulder on the beach, neither knowing nor caring for any horizon beyond its own few inches of rock and sand. How is it possible for me to make you comprehend what simple things may become dear to a man who has been cut off from the world as I have been? ”

“ Ah! dear Major Strickland, how much I owe to you and other kind friends! Had it not been for your efforts in my behalf, I should never have known what you have told me to-day."
"It would perhaps have been as well for your peace of mind if you never had known it."
"Indeed, dear Major Strickland, you must not say that. The truth can never injure us. But now you will tell me, will you not, all that you know or have heard respecting this father whom I shall never see on earth?"
But it was not the major's intention to tell Janet all that he knew respecting Captain Ducie. ”

“ It seems hard to believe that so short a time ago a tragedy so dire was enacted under the roof of this old mansion, where already the wheels of life move as noiselessly and methodically as if actuated by clockwork, and where one might easily imagine, but for the black dresses of the ladies, that nothing out of the common ever had happened or ever could happen. ”

“ But not till the great day of all would their awful silence ever be broken.
Drayton and Whiffins, drawing nearer to the coffin, gazed down through the glass plate at the immovable features underneath. Kester, leaning against one of the cold stone pillars, shuddered, but drew no nearer. Beyond the faint circle of light which radiated from the tapers, all was obscurity and gloom the most profound. ”

“ I think that the man who committed the crime should know that Lionel still lives, and that he holds in his hands the proof at once of his own innocence and of the other’s guilt. Beyond that I say this: The world believes my husband to be dead: rather than re-open so terrible a wound, let the world continue so to believe. My husband and I can do without the world, as well as it can do without us. We have our mutual love, which nothing can deprive us of: against that the shafts of Fortune beat as vainly as hailstones against a castle wall. ”