Edith Nesbit

“ Craye, "was frightened away from her life's happiness, as they call it, by seeing you rather near to a pink silk model. I suppose you think I shouldn't mind such things?"
"You forget," said Vernon demurely. "Such things never happen after one is married."
"No," she said, "of course they don't. I forgot that."
"You might as well marry me," he said, and the look of youth had come back suddenly, as it's way was, to his face.
"I might very much better not."
They looked at each other steadily. She saw in his eyes a little of what it was that Betty had taught him. ”

“ The banging of his door, the locking of it, annoyed Vernon, yet interested him but little. One's acquaintances have such queer notions of humour. He had the excuse—and by good luck the rope—to explore his celebrated roofs. Mimi was more agitated than he, so he dismissed her for the day with many compliments and a bunch of roses, and spent what was left of the light in painting in a background to the sketch of Betty—the warren as his sketch-book helped him to remember it. ”

“ A bunch of roses bigger and redder than any roses he had ever sent her came to Lady St. Craye with his card—p.d.a. in the corner.
She, too, shrugged her shoulders, bit her lip and—arranged the roses in water. Presently she tried to take up her life at the point where she had laid it down when, last October, Vernon had taken it into his hands. Succeeding as one does succeed in such enterprises. ”