E. Nesbit

“ To be the hero in the story of Salome and the Head takes something out of a man, I assure you.
“It’s most shocking,” the Aunt is saying, and she prides herself on the tact that withheld her from saying, “This is what comes of these goings-on.” “I’m not straight-laced, Heaven knows, but the scandals that came out in that case—well! And that house. You see—it makes you see there must always have been something wrong, or why be so deceitful and careful, not having any address, and a house inside two other house, like Chinese puzzles. Up to no good, you may depend, from the very beginning. ”

“ To be arrested in error for a crime of which one knows nothing is a trying incident; but one survives it. Edmund Templar was little the worse for his experience. Indeed, it is possible that his character was permanently benefited—steadied, as it were, by the contact with the iron-strong realities that clip the murderer like the teeth of a rat-trap. At any rate, whatever else he does, he will never do murder. ”

“ But when he thinks of Salome’s story, which is also his story, it is just that one last yelp of the cur in him that Edmund Templar cannot forget.
The Aunt, when she heard that, after all, there was to be no marriage between her nephew and the dancing woman, summed up the situation thus:
“I never believed that Providence would allow such a thing. Never. It would have broken my heart. I knew it could never be permitted. And I was so terrified that it might happen. And poor, dear Edmund, how shamefully she deceived him! The girl must have been mad. To refuse Edmund! ”

“ The palpitating publicity of a Coroner’s Court is no light thing; but when your heart is vibrating to a different measure—to a measure of immeasurable grief and pity and regret and love, the greater acts as opiate to the meaner pain. ”

“ He knows now that he is not the desperate character which he believed himself to be, and he will never again say, even in his nobler moments, that if he had met this or that man face to face, he would have shot him, no matter how personally repugnant may be to him this man or that. ”

“ The connection between sands and pine woods and actresses déclassée is obviously plain to the Aunt as the nose on anybody’s face.
“I daresay she’ll marry well—when things have blown over a bit. That lame boy. All alone in the house with her. And Mr. Ferrier behaving as he did! It all tells against a girl. It all tells,” the Uncle opines, “but these things blow over. People are much more charitable than they used to be.”
“People are less particular about right and wrong, Henry. ”