Bram Stoker

“ So long as Geoffrey Brent confined his dissipations to London and Paris and Vienna — anywhere out of sight and sound of his home — opinion was silent. It is easy to listen to far-off echoes unmoved, and we can treat them with disbelief, or scorn, or disdain, or whatever attitude of coldness may suit our purpose. ”

“ In the evening the doctor had to leave to attend to others; but he left Geoffrey in charge of his wife. His last words were:
"Remember, you must humour her till I come in the morning, or till some other doctor has her case in hand. What you have to dread is another attack of emotion. See that she is kept warm. Nothing more can be done."
Late in the evening, when the rest of the household had retired, Geoffrey's wife got up from her bed and called to her husband.
"Come!" she said. "Come to the old hall! I know where the gold comes from! I want to see it grow!" ”

“ So, little by little, the family dropped lower and lower, the men brooding and dissatisfied, and drinking themselves into the grave, the women drudging at home, or marrying beneath them — or worse. In process of time all disappeared, leaving only two in the Croft, Wykham Delandre and his sister Margaret. The man and woman seemed to have inherited in masculine and feminine form respectively the evil tendency of their race, sharing in common the principles, though manifesting them in different ways, of sullen passion, voluptuousness and recklessness. ”

“ Margaret Delandre bore herself so fearlessly and so openly — she accepted her position as the justified companion of Geoffrey Brent so naturally that people came to believe that she was secretly married to him, and therefore thought it wiser to hold their tongues lest time should justify her and also make her an active enemy. ”

“ The latter had declined generation after generation, sending out now and again some abortive shoot of unsatisfied energy in the shape of a soldier or sailor, who had worked his way to the minor grades of the services and had there stopped, cut short either from unheeding gallantry in action or from that destroying cause to men without breeding or youthful care — the recognition of a position above them which they feel unfitted to fill. ”

“ Fighting for its own sake is found by a certain class of persons, all the world over, to be a matter of absorbing interest, and there is no reason to believe that domestic conditions minimise its potency. Geoffrey and Margaret made occasional absences from Brent's Rock, and on each of these occasions Wykham Delandre also absented himself ”

“ In fact, they, having chosen the life of vegetables, had flourished as vegetation does — blossomed and thrived in the good season and suffered in the bad. Their holding, Dander's Croft, seemed to have been worked out, and to be typical of the family which had inhabited it. ”