Edmund Hodgson Yates

“ She could look up to him, and respect, and reverence him, and so on, but that was not the way in which she had loved her James. She had not the least respect for him, but used to laugh at him for his awkwardness, and great strong clumsy ways, never knowing what to do with his long legs and his great feet, and used to call him "a great goose," she recollected that, and the recollection brought the colour to her face, and made her smile in spite of herself. Marian could never call Mr. Creswell "a great goose," could never think of him so familiarly, no matter how long they might be married. ”

“ Believe in no woman's love, Walter, trust no woman's looks, or words, or vows. 'First of all would I fly from the cruel madness of love,' says Mr. Tennyson, and he is right. Cruel madness, indeed! we laugh at the wretched lunatic who dons a paper crown, and holds a straw for a sceptre, while all the time we are hugging our own tinsel vanities, and exulting in our own sham state! That's where the swells have the pull, my boy! They have no nonsense about mutual love, and fitness, and congeniality, and all that stuff, which is fitted for nothing but Valentine-mongers and penny romancists ”

“ His heart was in Marian Ashurst's keeping, his liege love, and in not one single pulsation should it be false to her. All this he had thought out before the interview with Lady Caroline, and his conduct then was exactly as he had prescribed to himself it should be. He took no credit to himself for his coldness and reserve, nor indeed did he deserve any, for he felt as calmly and coldly as he acted. There was but one person in the world with power to make his heart leap, his pulses fill, to rouse his energy with a look—to cloud his hopes with a word. ”

“ It is common talk."
"You were down in Helmingham the other day? Ah, of course! However, suppose I had come to you to say——" and she paused.
Joyce looked at her with great composure. "To say!" he repeated.
"I must go through with it," she muttered beneath her breath. "To say that the memory of old days is always rising in my mind, the sound of old words always ringing in my ears, the remembrance of old looks almost driving me mad! Suppose I had come to say all this; and this besides, share that fortune with me!" ”

“ Her voice thrills me almost to pain, and to see my mother's quiet tears when Maud plays to her in the dim evening, is to feel that the power of producing such salutary, healing emotion is priceless indeed. What a pity it is I am not a good musician! Loving music as you love it, dearest Walter, it will be a privation to you—if ever that time we talked of comes, when we should have a decent home to share—that I shall not be able to make sweet music for you. ”

“ Potter and Fyfe had it not been for the desire of revenging himself on Marian Creswell by opposing to the last, and, if possible, in every honourable way, by defeating, her husband. Joyce felt perfectly certain that Mr. Creswell—quiet easy-going old gentleman as he had been of late years, and more likely than ever to be disinclined to leave his retirement and do battle in the world since his son's death—was a mere puppet in the hands of his wife, whose ambition had prompted her to make her husband seek the honour, and whose vanity would be deeply wounded at his failure. ”

“ Why not speak of her as Marian, my dear?" said Mr. Creswell.
"She has always been Miss Ashurst to me hitherto, and you know I'm not going to marry her, uncle!" said Maud, almost brusquely.
"What do you think of Miss A. now?" said Gertrude, when the girls were back in their room. "I used to laugh about her being superior! But she has shown herself superior to us with a vengeance! Fancy having her for an aunt, and having to ask her permission to do this and that, and go here and there! Oh my! Why don't you speak, Maud—why don't you say something about all this?" ”

“ To no human being were Tom Creswell's moral deficiencies and shortcomings more patent than to his father; it is needless to say that to none were they the subject of such bitter anguish. Mr. Creswell knew that his son was a failure, and worse than a failure. If he had been merely stupid there would have been not much to grieve over. The lad would have been a disappointment, as how many lads are disappointments to fond parents, and that was all. Hundreds, thousands of stupid young men filled their position in society with average success. ”

“ Walter Joyce found himself gazing at her in an odd indescribable way. He had never seen anything like her, never realised such a combination of beauty, set off by the advantages of dress and surroundings. Her voice too, so bright and clear, and ringing, and her manner to him—to him? Was it not to him that she had really addressed these words of advice, although they were surely said in apparent reply to Captain Frampton's comments? If that were so, it was indeed kind of Lady Caroline, true, noble-hearted kindness; he must write and tell Marian of it. ”

“ What was the vision which during all that period, but especially since Tom Creswell's death, had haunted her, waking and sleeping, in company and in solitude, had been ever present to her thoughts, and had wrung her heart and disturbed her mental peace more keenly even than the thought of poverty, the desire for wealth? Dare she do it? She could, she had but little doubt of that, but little doubt of Mr. Creswell's daily increasing dependence on her, and regard for her. There was no one else in the world now, in whom he seemed to take the slightest interest. ”

“ And to Marian the dim personage said—"You, a young woman, handsome, clever, and with a lover who worshipped you, have bartered yourself away to that old man sitting there—for what? A fine house, which no one comes to see—carriages, in which you ride in a dull country town to receive the bows of a dozen shopkeepers, and drive home again—hawbuck servants, who talk against you as they talk against every one, but always more maliciously against any one whom they have known in a different degree of life—and the title of the squire's lady! ”

“ Creswell, of Woolgreaves, had entertained a sincere regard, built on profound respect, for Mr. Ashurst. He knew the inferiority of his own mind, and his own education, to those of the man who had contentedly and laboriously filled so humble a position—one so unworthy of his talents, as well as he knew the superiority of his own business abilities, the difference which had made him a rich man, and which would, under any circumstances, have kept Mr. Ashurst poor. He was a man possessed of much candour of mind and sound judgment ”

“ Vainly the father would endeavour to argue with himself, that the boy was as yet but a boy; that when he became a man he would put away the things which were not childish indeed, for then would there have been more hope, but bad, and in the fulness of time develop into what had been expected of him. Mr. Creswell knew to the contrary. He had watched his son for years with too deep an interest not to have perceived that as the years passed away, the light lines in the boy's character grew dim and faint, and the dark lines deepened in intensity. ”

“ Ashurst, who sat propped up by pillows in a large easy-chair in her sitting-room, gazing out of the window, looking at nothing, but enjoying everything with the tranquil serenity of old age. For several years past there had not been much life in the old lady, and there was very little now; her vital powers, never very strong, had been decaying slowly but surely, and Dr. Osborne knew that the time was not far distant, when the widow of his old friend would be called away to rejoin the husband she had so dearly loved, in the Silent Land. ”

“ And might not this sad event prove a useful lesson to her; might it not prove the one thing needful to render her a perfect character, showing her, as it would, that there are worse misfortunes than poverty, and that grief can slip in behind the shields of wealth and position, and abase the heads of their possessors to the dust? That longing for money and worship of position was the only blot in Marian's character, as seen by Walter Joyce's eyes, and if this accident led to its eradication, it would not have been without its beneficent purpose. ”

“ Rogues and noodles, noodles and rogues. Don't you like the picture?"
"I should hate it, if I believed in it, Mr. Byrne!" said Joyce, moving away, "but I don't! You won't think me rude or unkind, but—but I've been brought up in so widely different a faith. I've been taught to hold in such reverence all that I hear you deny, that——"
"Stick to it, lad! hold to it while you can!" said the old man, kindly, laying his hand on his companion's arm. "My doctrines are strong meat for babes—too strong, I dare say—and you're but a toothless infant yet in these things, anyhow! So much the better for you. ”

“ It does not take a great deal to fill Lord Hetherington's soul with rapture. Down in Norfolk villages, in the neighbourhood of his ancestral home, and far away in scattered cottages on the side of green Welsh mountains, where the cross-tree rears its inopportune head in the midst of the lovely landscape, and where smoke and coal-dust permeate the soft delicious air, his lordship, as landlord and mine-holder, is spoken of with bated breath by tenants and workmen, and regarded as one of the hardest-headed, tightest-fisted men of business by stewards and agents. ”

“ She longed to mix with clever people, amongst whom she would be able to hold her own by her natural gifts, and more than her own by her wealth. To be known in the London world, with the entry into it which her husband's position would secure to her, and then to distinguish herself there, that was the new excitement which Marian Creswell craved, and day by day she recurred to the subject of the election, and discussed its details with her husband, delighting him with the interest which she showed in the scheme, and by the shrewd practical common sense which she brought to bear upon it. ”

“ This question was rather addressed to Maud, and she answered it by saying quietly, "I suppose so."
"Oh, nonsense, Maud!" said Gertrude; "uncle's an old dear kindest, nicest old thing in the world, but not for a girl to like in—well, in that sort of way, don't you know! Not the sort of man to be a girl's first love, I mean!"
"Are you sure that your uncle is Miss Ashurst's first love?"
"We never heard of any other. What is it, George—Mr. Benthall, I mean? You've found out something! Oh, do tell us!"
"Did you know anything of a Mr. Joyce, who was one of Mr. Ashurst's masters?" ”