M. E. Braddon

“ If you were a widow to-morrow, and free to marry again, you would choose just such another man as Tom—a man who laughs loud, and pays flourishing compliments, and drives a gig with a high-stepping horse. That's the sort of man women like, and that's the sort of man you'd marry."
"I'm sure I shouldn't marry at all," answered Mrs. Halliday, in a voice that was broken by little gasping sobs. "I have seen enough of the misery of married life. But I don't want Tom to die, unkind as he is to me. ”

“ I love her more truly, more purely than I thought myself capable of loving; yet I can only approach her as the tool of George Sheldon, a rapacious conspirator, bent on securing the hoarded thousands of old John Haygarth.
Of all men upon this earth I should be the last to underrate the advantages of wealth,—I who have been reared in the gutter, which is Poverty's cradle. Yet I would fain Charlotte's fortune had come to her in any other fashion than as the result of my work in the character of a salaried private inquirer. ”

“ You would be glad to come, if you loved me."
"And I do love you, Lotta, with all my heart," answered Miss Paget, with unusual fervour; "but then the whole of my heart is not much. As to coming to live with you, of course it would be a hundred thousand times pleasanter than the life I lead here; but it is not to be supposed that Mr. Sheldon will consent to have a stranger in his house just because his impulsive stepdaughter chooses to take a fancy to a schoolfellow who isn't worthy of half her affection."
"Let me be the judge of that. As to my stepfather, I am almost sure of his consent. ”

“ For thirteen years of Diana's life all love and tenderness, endearing words, caressing touches, fond admiring looks, had been utterly unknown to her. To sit in a room with a father who was busy writing letters, and who was wont to knit his brows peevishly if she stirred, or to mutter an oath if she spoke; to be sent to a pawnbroker's in the gloaming with her father's watch, and to be scolded and sworn at on her return if the money-lender had advanced a less sum than was expected on that security—do not compose the most delightful or improving experiences of a home life. ”

“ And then when Charlotte looked at her friend with a sad perplexed face, Diana relented, and declared that she was a wicked discontented creature, unworthy of either pity or affection.
"I have had so much misery in my life, that I am very often inclined to quarrel with happy people without rhyme or reason, or only because they are happy," she said in explanation of her impatient temper.
"But who knows what happiness may be waiting for you in the future, Di?" exclaimed Miss Halliday. "You will marry some rich man by-and-by, and forget that you ever knew what poverty was." ”

“ My mother was a good woman in the beginning, I know; but she must have been something more than a mortal woman if she had not lost some of her goodness in twelve years of such a life as she led with my father. I believe she was fond of me, poor soul; but she died six months before I ran away from a lodging in the Rules, which it is the bitterest irony to speak of as my home. Since then I have been Robert Macaire, and have about as many friends as such a man usually has."
"You can scarcely wonder if you have few friends," said Miss Paget, "since there is no one in the world whom you love." ”

“ The rest is very easy to bear, and to outlive. These things do not last for ever, Charlotte, whatever the poets and novelists may tell us. If I had not lived through the worst, I should not be here to-night, with your arm round my neck and his name upon my lips. I have never wished you joy until to-night, Charlotte, and now for the first time I can wish you all good things, in honesty and truth. I have conquered myself. I do not say that to me Valentine Hawkehurst can ever be quite what other men are. ”

“ It is astonishing how genial and friendly these men of the world can be at the slightest imaginable notice. One can fancy the striped tigers of Bengal shaking paws in the jungle, the vultures hob-nobbing in a mountain cleft over the torn carcass of a stag, the kites putting their beaks together after dining on a nest of innocent doves.
"Then we shall expect to see you at sharp six," said Mr. Sheldon, "and your friend Mr. Hawkehurst with you, of course."
After this the two gentlemen departed. Valentine shook hands with Diana, and took a more ceremonious leave of Charlotte. ”

“ And Mr. Sheldon's lovely stepdaughter was the lineal descendant of this very Molly. Strange mystery of transmitted resemblances! Here was the sweet face that had bewitched honest, simple-minded Matthew Haygarth reproduced after the lapse of a century.
My Charlotte was descended from a poor little player girl who had smiled on the roisterous populace of Bartholomew Fair. Some few drops of Bohemian blood mingled with the pure life-stream in her veins. It pleased me to think of this; but I derived no pleasure from the idea that Charlotte might possibly be the claimant of a great fortune. ”

“ What I should like is a dear little cottage at Highgate or Wimbledon, and a tiny, tiny garden, in which Valentine and I could walk every morning before he began his day's work, and where we could drink tea together on summer evenings—a garden just large enough to grow a few rose-bushes. O. Di! do you think I want to marry a rich man?"
"No, Charlotte; but I should think you would like to marry a good man."
"Valentine is good. No one but a good man could have been so happy as he seemed at Newhall farm. That simple country life could not have been happiness for a bad man." ”

“ Three thousand pounds at five per cent—one hundred and fifty pounds a year. I felt that with such an income assured to us, and the fruits of my industry, Charlotte and I might be secure from all the storms of life. Ah, what happiness it would be to work for her! And I am not too old to begin life afresh; not too old for the bar; not too old to make some mark as a writer on the press; not too old to become a respectable member of society.
After having despatched my letter to Sheldon, I made off for Newhall farm with all speed. ”

“ Do you know, Di, I cannot picture to myself anything sweeter than that—to be a good influence for the person one loves. Valentine says his whole nature has undergone a change since he has known me. What am I that I should work so good a change in my dear one? It is very foolish, is it not, Di?"
"Yes, Charlotte," replied the voice of reason from the lips of Miss Paget; "it is all foolishness from beginning to end, and I can foresee nothing but trouble as the result of such folly. What will your mamma say to such an engagement? or what will Mr. Sheldon say?" ”

“ Philip heard him, and turned his chair to the fire with a movement of impatience.
"You may be uncommonly clever, my dear George," soliloquised the dentist, "but you'll never make a fortune by reading wills and hunting in parish-registers for heirs-at-law. A big lump of money is not very likely to go a-begging while any one who can fudge up the faintest pretence of a claim to it is above ground. No, no, my lad, you must find a better way than that before you'll make your fortune."
The fire had burnt low again, and Mr. Sheldon sat staring gloomily at the blackening coals. ”

“ There is nothing but money, and men are the slaves of money, and life is only another name for the pursuit of money. Go and look at beauty yonder fading in the light and heat; at youth that changes to age before your eyes; at friendship which turns to hate when the chances of the game are with my friend and against me. The Kursaal is the world in little, Diana ”

“ He was a grocer, and lived in the market-place of Ullerton in Leicestershire; an out-of-the-way sleepy place it is now, but was prosperous enough in those days, I daresay. This man (the grandfather) began the world well off, and amassed a large fortune before he had done with it. The lucky beggar lived in the days when free trade and competition were unknown, when tea was something like sixty shillings a pound, and when a psalm-singing sleek-haired fellow, with a reputation for wealth and honesty, might cheat his customers to his heart's content. ”

“ If I have any redeeming grace, Diana Paget, it lies in the fact that I know what a worthless wretch I am. Your father thinks he is a great man, a noble suffering creature, and that the world has ill-used him. I know that I am a scoundrel, and that let my fellow-men treat me as badly as they please, they can never give me worse usage than I deserve. And am I a man to talk about love, or to ask a woman to share my life? ”

“ I asked her to be my wife before I knew that she had the blood of Matthew Haygarth in her veins, and the knowledge of her claim to this fortune does not make her one whit the dearer to me, penniless adventurer as I am. If poetry were at all in your line, Mr. Sheldon, you might know that a man's love for a good woman is generally better than himself. He may be a knave and a scoundrel, and yet his love for that one perfect creature may be almost as pure and perfect as herself. That's a psychological mystery out of the way of Gray's Inn, isn't it? ”

“ I am fitful and capricious. I used to like Mr. Hawkehurst, and now I dislike him. As to offence, his whole life has offended me, just as my father's life has offended me, from first to last. I am not good and amiable and loving, like you; but I hate deceptions and lies; above all, the lies that some men traffic in day after day."
"Was Valentine's—was your father's life a very bad one?" Charlotte asked, trembling palpably, and looking up at Miss Paget's face with anxious eyes. ”

“ Sheldon's old port in the long summer evenings, while their wives endured the abomination of desolation with Georgy and Charlotte in the drawing-room. Captain Paget paid Mrs. Sheldon flowery compliments, and told her delightful stories of the aristocracy and all that shining West-end world with which he had once been familiar. Poor simple Georgy regarded him with that reverential awe which a middle-class country-bred woman is prone to feel for a man who bears upon him that ineffaceable stamp of high birth and good breeding, not to be destroyed by half a century of degradation. ”

“ That's what kills people of my temperament. There are born scamps in the world, Diana, and I am one of them. My name is Robert Macaire, and I was created for the life I lead. Keep clear of me if you have any hankering after better things; but don't try to change my nature, for it is wasted labour."
"Valentine, it is so cruel of you to talk like that."
"Cruel to whom?"
"To—those—who care for you."
It was quite dark now; but even in the darkness Diana Paget's head drooped a little as she said this. Mr. Hawkehurst laughed aloud.
"Those who care for me!" he cried; "no such people ever lived. ”

“ Hawkehurst. An indifferent observer might have perceived that the colour faded from the face of one, while a blush mounted to the cheeks of the other. But Valentine did not see the sudden pallor of Diana's face—he had eyes only for Charlotte's blushes. Nor did Charlotte herself perceive the sudden change in her dearest friend's countenance. And that perhaps is the bitterest sting of all. It is not enough that some must weep while others play; the mourners must weep unnoticed, unconsoled; happiness is so apt to be selfish. ”

“ George Sheldon had said something very near the truth when he had told Philip that Mrs. Halliday would be afraid to refuse him. The fair-haired, fair-faced little woman did in some manner fear the first lover of her girlhood. She had become his wife, and so far all things had gone well with her; but if misery and despair had been the necessary consequences of her union with him, she must have married him all the same, so dominant was the influence by which he ruled her. Of course Georgy was not herself aware of her own dependence. ”

“ Hawkehurst is, that he shall earn a good income before he takes you away from this house. You have been accustomed to a certain style of living, and I cannot allow you to encounter a life of poverty."
"But, dear papa, I am not in the least afraid of poverty."
"I daresay not, my dear. You have never been poor," replied Mr. Sheldon, coolly. "I don't suppose I am as much afraid of a rattlesnake as the poor wretches who are accustomed to see one swinging by his tail from the branch of a tree any day in the course of their travels. ”