Kate Chopin

“ Had it been Hosmer or Thérèse asking her the question she would have replied simply “yes,” but to Grégoire she said “yes; thank Goodness,” as frankly as though she had been speaking to Belle Worthington. “I don’t see what’s kept her down here all this time, anyway.”
“You don’t like her?” he asked, stupefied at the strange possibility of any one not loving Melicent to distraction.
“No. You wouldn’t either, if you knew her as well as I do. If she likes a person she goes on like a lunatic over them as long as it lasts; then good-bye John! she’ll throw them aside as she would an old dress.” ”

“ Hosmer looked after the young man, and thought of him for a moment: of his soft voice and gentle manner—perplexed that he should be the same who had expressed in confidence the single regret that he had not been able to kill Joçint more than once.
Grégoire went directly to the house, and approached that end of the veranda on which Melicent’s room opened. A trunk had already been packed and fastened and stood outside, just beneath the low-silled window that was open. ”

“ He saw in it one of those interesting problems of human existence that are ever turning up for man’s contemplation, but hardly for the exercise of man’s individual judgment. He was conscious of an inward repulsion which this action of Grégoire’s awakened in him,—much the same as a feeling of disgust for an animal whose instinct drives it to the doing of violent deeds,—yet he made no difference in his manner towards him. ”