George Henry Lewes

“ Cecil having called for the champagne, placed the gold in his purse, and seemed to have realized his dream: glimpses even of the country house sparkled on the froth of the wine!
His brain was in a whirl, and the chink of money, the rattle of the dice, the unvarying phrases of the dealer, the brief remarks of the players, all sounded like fairy music in his ears. ”

“ Violet shook all over; but she did not raise her eyes.
"An heiress?" asked Vyner.
"No,—to continue Tennyson,—
'I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.'"
There was singular bitterness, as he added,—
"In those climates, the passions are not cramped by the swaddling clothes of civilisation; their franker natures better suit my own impulsiveness; when they love they love—they do not stultify their hearts with intricate sophisms."
Violet now raised her large eyes, and, with mournful steadiness, reproached him by a look, for the words he had just uttered. ”

“ Gambling by day has, somehow, a more hideous aspect than by night: I suppose because it looks so little like an amusement, and so much like a mere affair of cupidity. But Cecil had grown used to this, as to other loathsome aspects of his vice, and sat down to the table with as much sang froid as if he were about to transact the most ordinary piece of business.
He had not been playing long, winning and losing in pretty equal succession, when Frank came back.
"What, again!" said Cecil. "I thought you had gone for the day: I heard you had departed with your winnings." ”

“ I renounce the hope of happiness. I have only now to bear with fortitude my wretched fate. Forget me, Marmaduke. No, that is an idle phrase—I do not mean it. Do not forget me; think of me, think of me often, and love me still, if you can; at least pity me, and imitate me. Accept fate; bow your head to its irresistible decree; but do not despair. Life has other purposes than love; other purposes even than happiness; let those occupy you. In this life we are separated, but we shall meet above. ”

“ She guessed at once the truth of the whole history; she saw that Cecil had gambled away the fifty pounds, and that he had not only reconciled himself to it, but had made up his mind to extort from the generosity of the captain certain sums which would enable him to indulge his unhappy passion.
What a situation for a loving wife! Never before, not even in his worst exhibitions of selfishness and weakness, had Blanche despised her husband; but she could not master the feeling now; a lurking sense of contempt would intrude itself upon her thoughts. ”

“ He placed a cheque in her hand as he said this. She understood but too well this delicate mode of assisting them, and a tear rose into her eye as she pressed his hand significantly: she could not speak. He embraced her child repeatedly, and, with a fond protecting look, bade her good-bye.
Left alone, she burst into tears: they were tears of gratitude and tears of shame: gratitude for the beautiful and delicate friendship of the act and its manner: shame at finding herself reduced to such a state, that she was forced to accept alms from her former lover. ”

“ There was something so painful in this retired sorrow; that Cecil, who was contemplating him with a sort of drunken compassion, went up to him, and said,—
"Do not be downcast, sir, fortune may change. Have you lost much?"
"Seventeen pounds," sobbed the young man; "but it was my all—I am ruined! utterly ruined! Fortune cannot change for me, for I shall never have another sixpence, to tempt her with. O my poor mother! my poor mother!"
A tear stood in Cecil's eye, and he hiccupped. He was debating with himself whether he should give the unhappy youth a chance of recovering his gains. ”

“ After all, Heath might possibly have desired a picture. The fool! as if he knew anything about pictures—he, the heavy guardsman, purchase pictures!
Yet, if he was rich, that was one way of spending his money. There was nothing but what was perfectly legitimate in an artist receiving a commission;—all artists receive them.
And with this fifty pounds a fortune was within his grasp.
He no longer walked, he crawled. This money was certainly his, if he chose to take it; why should he refuse? To be sure, the money of that scoundrel! All an excuse, too: Blanche knew it was an excuse. ”

“ She rose at last to go home. He accompanied her to the door—saw her take Rose Blanche from the servant girl, and cover it with frantic kisses; and then departed sad and thoughtful to his own solitary home.
He could not, in his sympathy with her, forbear picturing to himself the contrast of what her fate would have been had she married him instead of Cecil; nor could he refrain from bitterly commenting on the truth of his own prophecies that Cecil would make her unhappy. No lover ever believes that his beloved can possibly be happy with his rival ”

“ Captain Heath was her companion in almost every walk and drive; reading to her the books she wished; daily becoming a greater favourite with little Rose Blanche, who would leave even her nurse to come to him; and daily feeling serener, as his love grew not deeper, but less unquiet: less, as he imagined, like a lover's love, and more like that of an elder brother. ”

“ How Julius and Rose admired Tinterne Abbey! Everybody does. Everybody remembers Wordsworth's magnificent lines; and it is the glorious privilege of poetry to open our eyes to the divinity of beauty which lies around us, and to confer on nature herself a splendour not her own. But lovers have no need of an hierophant: beauty to them is visible without the poet's aid; for they themselves are poets. And to our lovers the abbey was more exquisite than to any wayfarer's eye seeking only the picturesque. ”

“ The lovers "feel as if they had been married years;" and yet a curious sense of novelty is always present. They do not feel what they expected to feel; yet are they not surprised. In fact, they are all feeling; all deep, vivid, unspeakable emotion. Hand clasped in hand, lip pressed to lip, eyes fixed on eyes, hours of silent and unbroken bliss pass swiftly on, as if the wide universe were shrunk into one spot, as if a whole eternity were not too great to be filled by that one passion.
Love is the intensest form of life. No wonder, then, that all human beings crave it ”

“ But this joy was dashed with the recollection that he never could be hers. All that had transpired would prevent their union. Neither her father nor her step-mother could be expected to give their consent; and with their consent, if it were given, she still felt that her own must be withheld. How could she ever accept the man who had been both seriously and treacherously the lover of her father's wife—the man whom that wife loved?
The horrible sarcasm in which Mrs. Vyner bade her "accept her leavings," still rankled in the proud soul of Violet, and created an irremediable loathing. ”

“ The boisterous gaiety of the afternoon and dinner had ceased. Every one knows the effect of an exhilarating feast, followed by a listless exhausted hour or two; when the excitement produced by wine and laughter has passed away, a lassitude succeeds, which in poetical minds induces a tender melancholy, in prosaic minds a desire for stimulus or sleep.
As the day went down, all the guests were exhausted, except Marmaduke and Violet, who, while the others were gradually becoming duller and duller, had insensibly wandered away, engrossed in the most enchanting conversation. ”

“ Perhaps, had Violet been his wife, instead of the meek, resigned Blanche, the greater force of her will, and directness of her mind might have cowed him. Violet might have shamed him into honour. Her courage and her inflexible will, by braving his anger, by enduring scenes of domestic misery, but by unflinchingly keeping to the point, might, with one so weak, so impressionable, and so affectionate, have rescued him from perdition. But Blanche was ill suited to such a task. Her spirit, never strong, had been early broken. She had learned to endure evils, not to combat them. ”

“ She rose, as she said this, and walked across the room to Mrs. Langley Turner, by whose side she sat down; while Maxwell gazed on her with mingled feelings of astonishment and rage, his brow darkening, his lips compressed, and every nerve within him trembling.
Mrs. Vyner was wrong in her suspicions. It was not vanity, it was jealousy which prompted his words. He suffered tortures from seeing her smile, and chat with other men, and scarcely notice him. He was sincere in his wish for her to distinguish him above all the rest ”

“ She flung herself into his arms.
"Is this true, Violet? Speak—are you mine—mine?"
She pressed him closer to her. It is only men who find words in such moments; and Marmaduke was as eloquent as love and rapture could make him.
When she did speak, it was in a low fluttering tone, her pale face suffused with blushes, as she told him, that to live apart from him was impossible;—either he must stay, or take her with him.
Meanwhile, Vyner had been prettily rated by Blanche for his dulness in not perceiving that the lovers wanted to be alone. ”

“ He returned, but it was to watch over his beloved; and on his return, what was his horror to hear of the situation into which her wretched husband had precipitated her!
Blanche was embarrassed, yet delighted. From childhood she had known him, and loved him almost as a father; and to her old affection there was now added, the unconscious flattery of her knowledge of his love for her. No woman is ever insensible to such flattery; the man who loves her, though hopelessly, is always interesting in her eyes. Blanche was eminently a woman. ”

“ Did you ever meet with one whose head was not crammed with absurd notions thereupon? Is not your husband, in particular, characterized by the most preposterous incapacity—is he not fidgety, crotchety, absurd? I knew it.
Let me not, therefore, admit one word of Cecil's respecting Rose Blanche, who promised to have more beauty, intelligence, and heart, than any other infant then sprawling in long clothes, or then looking with profound impenetrable calmness upon the wondrous universe to which it had been so recently introduced. ”

“ With unimpassioned, inexpressive face did the dealer throw down the cards, as if all the chances of the game which so excited the players were powerless upon him.
"Red wins," he again said, in his hollow indifferent voice.
Cecil raked the seventy pounds towards him in a sort of delirium: the sight of the gold was to him like a vision of fairy land.
The smiling snuff-taker snatched up his five shillings, and again requested him to take a pinch.
"Pretty game, sir; very pretty, when fortune takes you in hand."
"We had better cut now," said Frank. ”

“ He thinks my conduct unwarrantable—perhaps it was—and he dislikes me. There, you see I look at the matter in its true light. I do not blame you—I do not blame him. A husband is not forced to accept the friends of his wife."
At this moment Cecil returned.
Heath coloured as he saw him enter the room; Blanche turned aside her head to conceal her tears, but not before Cecil's glance had detected them; a fierce pain shot across Cecil's heart, as if a burning iron had entered it, but with a hypocritical smile he extended his hand to the captain, and expressed himself delighted to see him. ”

“ Heaps of gold glitter before the infatuated dreamer; and although he rouses himself with a sigh to find that he has only been dreaming, yet the dream has had the vividness of reality to him. Many and many an unhappy wight has started up from such dreams, goaded with a sense of their reality, and persuaded that, if he only play the game as he has just played it in imagination, he must infallibly win; has pawned his last remnant, or robbed his employers, to rush to the gaming-table, and venture everything on the strength of that conviction. ”

“ As the cab dashed round the corner, by Charles the First's statue, she saw Cecil hurry from Messrs. Drummonds' banking-house. She saw no more: her brain swam round. When the driver opened the cab door, he found her in a swoon.
It did not last long: she recovered herself; and wildly looking round her, remembered in an instant all that had passed.
"To South Audley Street!" she impatiently exclaimed.
To Captain Heath's she drove, and astonished the servant very much by hurrying up stairs, and rushing into the room as if life and death depended on her speed.
"Good God, Blanche! ”