M. E. Braddon

“ If you had chosen to take my advice, you would have placed Charlotte Halliday's fortune, and Charlotte Halliday herself, beyond his power, by an immediate marriage. You didn't choose to do that, and there was an end of the matter. I have been a heavy loser by your pigheaded obstinacy; and I dare say before you and Phil Sheldon have done with each other, you too will find yourself a loser."
"God help me, yes!" cried Valentine, with a groan; "I stand to make the heaviest loss that was ever made by man." ”

“ He was a good friend to me, and I liked him as much as a man of the world can afford to like anybody. If I had been down in the world, and had asked him for a hundred pounds to give me a new start in life, I think he'd have said, 'George, here's a cheque for you.' That's my notion of a friend. And yet I stood by that man's deathbed, and saw him sinking, and knew what ailed him, and didn't stretch out my hand to save him."
"Be so good as to move away from that door," said Mr. Sheldon, livid to the lips with smothered fury, but able to put on a bold front nevertheless. ”

“ Do you think such luck as yours goes begging every day?"
"You would have me accept Gustave Lenoble's offer, no matter what falsehoods may be involved in my acceptance of it?"
"I can see no reason for falsehood. Any one but an idiot would honour such a man; any one but an idiot would thank Providence for such good fortune."
"Very well, papa," exclaimed Diana, with a laugh that had no mirthful music, "I will not be the exceptional idiot. If M. Lenoble does me the honour to repeat his offer—and I think from his manner he means to do so—I will accept it." ”

“ Diana blushed as she remembered that Captain Paget had not been so innocent of any design in this matter as the Frenchman imagined.
"And you will receive even papa for my sake?" asked Diana.
"With all my heart."
"Ah, you are indeed a generous lover!"
"A lover who is not generous is—bah! there is nothing in creation so mean as the wretch whom love does not render generous. When one sees the woman whom Fate intends for one's wife, is one to stop to inquire the character of her father, her mother, her sister, her cousin?—for there is no stopping when you begin that. ”

“ I trust your daughters may prove as worthy of your love, M. Lenoble."
"They are very dear girls," answered the Frenchman; "but for them life has been all sunshine. They have never known a sorrow except the death of their mother. It is the storm that tests the temper of the tree. I wish they might prove as noble in adversity as Miss Paget has shown herself."
This was more than Diana could bear without some kind of protest.
"You must not take papa's praises au pied de la lettre, M. Lenoble," she said; "I have been by no means brave or patient under adversity. ”

“ It is not her habit to occupy herself."
Gustave's heart gave a great jump. She was not gone; he might see her again—if it were but a glimpse of her pale face looking out of the diligence as it drove out of the Cour de Messageries. One look, one glance; it would be something to carry in his heart all his life. All his life! He looked forward and shuddered. What a dreary life it must needs be! Côtenoir, Beaubocage, Madelon, the law; to plead, to read papers, to study dry as dust books. He shrank appalled from the contemplation of that dreary desert of existence—a life without her. ”

“ By and by, if Providence gives me children to work for, I will refuse no bounty that you may bestow on them. Their future may be rendered secure by your generosity, if you please, Lenoble; they will be your kindred. But for an alien like myself there is no discipline so wholesome as honest hard work. I am as rich as John Milton when he set up a school in St. Bride's Churchyard."
To this resolution Mr. Hawkehurst adhered with a gentle firmness.
"Thou art chivalrous like Don Quixote," said Gustave Lenoble; "but it shall be as thou wouldest. Touch there." ”

“ I could only confess my folly when I knew that I was learning to be wise. Pray do not think that I am sordid or mercenary. It is not because M. Lenoble is rich that I am inclined to marry him, it is because—"
"Because you want to throw yourself away for the advantage of your selfish heartless father," interjected Charlotte. "He has neglected you all your life, and now wants to profit by the sacrifice of your happiness. Be firm, Di, darling; your Charlotte will stand by you, and find a home for you always, come what may. Who is this M. Lenoble? Some horrible ugly old creature, I dare say." ”

“ And even now, when she is mine by virtue of a bond that only death can loosen, it seems to me as if her wealth would make a kind of division between us. There are people who will always consider me a lucky adventurer, and look at my marriage as the result of clever scheming. I cannot advertise to the world the fact that I loved Charlotte Halliday from the first hour in which I saw her, and asked her to be my wife three days before I discovered her claim to John Haygarth's estate. A man can't go through the world with his justification pinned upon his breast. ”

“ Do you prate of patience, and waiting, and hope in the future to a man who has no future—to a man whose days are numbered, and who feels the creeping chills of death stealing over him every day as he sits beside his wretched hearth, or labours through his daily drudgery? I can live as I have always lived! Yes; but do you know, or care to know, that with every day life becomes more difficult for me? Your fine friends at Bayswater have done with me. I have spent the last sixpence I shall ever see from Philip Sheldon. Hawkehurst has cut me, like the ungrateful hound he is. ”

“ There is no one who can claim you by any right—" He paused; and then added, in a lower voice, "by any wrong?"
"No one," answered Miss Paget, lifting her head, and looking her lover full in the face. Even in that uncertain light he could see the proud steady gaze that seemed the fittest answer of all doubts.
"Thank God!" he whispered. "Ah, how could I fear, even for one moment, that you could be anything but what you seem—the purest among the pure? Why, then, do you reject me? You do not love me, but you ask my friendship; you offer me your friendship, even your affection. ”

“ He listened to Madame Magnotte's stories of departed splendour. To him she opened her heart as she never had opened it to those other young men.
"They mock themselves of everything—even the religion!" she exclaimed, with horror. "They are Diderots and Holbachs in the bud, less the talent. But you do not come of that gutter in which they were born. You are of the old blood of France, M. Lenoble, and I can trust myself to you as I cannot to them. I, who speak to you—I, too, come of a good old race, and there is sympathy between we others." ”

“ The memory and the bitterness of them came back with renewed poignancy at this moment, when the voice of a stranger told her she was beloved.
"My dear one, will you not answer me?" pleaded Gustave, in nowise alarmed by Diana's silence, which seemed to him only the natural expression of a maidenly emotion. "Tell me that you will give me measure for measure; that you will love me as my mother loved my father—with a love that trouble and poverty could never lessen; with a love that was strongest when fate was darkest—a star which the dreary night of sorrow could not obscure. ”

“ And if you had been, Gustave Lenoble would not have flung his heart into your lap, even if your eyes had been sweeter than they are. We impulsive people are people of quick perceptions, and know what we are doing better than our reflective friends imagine. I did not need to be an hour in your company, dear love, in order to know that you are noble and true. There are tones in the voice, there are expressions of the face, that tell these things better than words can tell them; for, you see, words can lie, while tones and looks are apt to be true. Yes, my angel, I knew you from that first night. ”

“ Go back to Beaubocage, and let your mother and sister nurse you. I will stay here with the little one. It shall be forgotten that you have a wife and child."
"No, dear one; I will not desert you, even for a day, to buy back my father's love. I would rather be here with you than in the pleasantest home without you. But we must face the future, Susan; we must be brave and wise, for the little one's sake. You are not so strong that you can afford to trust blindly in your power to protect him by-and-by. ”

“ A man who loves makes no inquiries. If he finds his jewel in the gutter, he picks it out of the mud and carries it away in his bosom, too proud of his treasure to remember where he found it; always provided that the jewel is no counterfeit, but the real gem, fit for a king's crown. And my diamond is of the purest water. By-and-by we will try to drain the gutter—that is to say, we will try to pay those small debts of which you speak, to lodging-house keepers, and tradesmen who have trusted your father."
"You would pay papa's debts!" cried Diana in amazement. ”

“ Valentine did not heed the change in it.
"Yes, murdered—sacrificed to the utter incompetence of that old idiot who has just left us."
Philip Sheldon drew a long breath.
"What!" he exclaimed; "do you doubt Doddleson's skill?"
"Do you believe in it? Do you? No; I cannot think that a man of your keen perception in all other matters—half a medical man yourself—can be the dupe of so shallow an impostor. And it is to that man's judgment my darling's life has been confided; and it is to that man I have looked, with hope and comfort in the thought of his power to save my treasure! Good God! ”

“ To run the streets, to go by here, by there, in hunting the papers of that marriage, or this baptism? Believe you that is so agreeable, Monsieur the Captain? No; I desire to be paid for my work. I must have my part in the heritage which I have help to win."
"It is not won yet. We will talk of your recompense by-and-by."
"We will talk of it this instant—upon the field. It must that I comprehend where I am in this affair. I will not of mystifications, of prevarications, of lies—"
"M. Fleurus!" cried the Captain, with a hand stretched towards the bell. ”

“ What do you want in a husband, I should like to know? A rich man? Lenoble is that. A handsome man? Lenoble is that. A gentleman, with good blood in his veins? Lenoble comes of as pure a race as any man in that part of France. A good man? Lenoble is one of the best fellows upon this earth. What is it, then, that you want?"
"I want to give my heart to the man who gives me his."
"And what, in the name of all that's preposterous, is to prevent you giving Gustave Lenoble your heart?" ”

“ Sometimes, in moments of doubt or despondency, he had thought it possible that poverty, the advice of friends, caprice or inconstancy on the part of Charlotte herself, should sever them. But among the possible enemies to his happiness he had never counted Death. What had Death to do with so fair and happy a creature as Charlotte Halliday? she who, until some two months before this time, might have been the divine Hygieia in person—so fresh was her youthful bloom, so buoyant her step, so bright her glances. Valentine's hardest penance was the necessity for the concealment of his anxiety. ”

“ A creature at once so beautiful and so profoundly sad became an object of interest to others besides Gustave; but in no breast was the sympathy which her sadness and beauty excited so poignant as in his. Her face haunted him. The familiar pleasures and amusements became distasteful to him. He spent his evenings at home in the dismal salon, and was content to listen to the chatter of the old women, the little music-mistress's dreary sonatas, the monotonous roll of wheels on the distant quay—anything rather than the hackneyed round of student-life that had once been agreeable to him. ”

“ After this they went back to Omega Street in the winter gloaming, and Diana loved and admired this man with all her heart and mind. A new life lay before her, very bright and fair. There, where had been only the barren desert, was now a fair landscape, shining in the sunlight of hope.
"Do you think your children will ever love me, Gustave?" she asked, not without some sense of wonder that this impulsive light-hearted lover should be the owner of children. She fancied that a responsibility so grave as paternity must needs have impressed some stamp of solemnity upon the man who bore it. ”

“ The man—haggard, dying—cherished a pride that had grown fiercer as the grip of poverty tightened upon him. The woman lived only for her husband and her child.
The man was Gustave Lenoble. The world had gone ill with him since he cast his destiny into the lap of the woman he loved. In all these years no olive-bearing dove had spanned the gulf that yawned between the prodigal and his father. The seigneur of Beaubocage had been marble. A narrow-minded old man, living his narrow life, and nursing one idea with fanatical devotion, was of all men the least likely to forgive. ”

“ Valentine would have no money staked on that dear head.
The steed which Charlotte had desired for her husband's pleasure, the library which she had catalogued so often, were yet among the delights of the future; but life has lost half its brightness when there is no unfulfilled desire left to the dreamer; and the horse which Mr. Hawkehurst was to ride in time to come, and the noble library which he was to collect, were the pleasant themes of Charlotte's conversation very often, as she and her husband walked on the heights of Wimbledon in the twilight, when his day's work was done. ”

“ Sheldon had nothing to say against the marriage. If any false statement of his, however base or cruel, could have invalidated the ceremonial, he would have spared no pains to devise such a falsehood. If he had been a citizen of the Southern States, he might have suborned witnesses to prove that there was black blood in the veins of Valentine Hawkehurst. If he had not been opposed to so strong an opponent as Dr. Jedd, he might have tried to get a commission of lunacy to declare Charlotte Halliday a madwoman, and thus invalidate her marriage. ”

“ It is not possible for humanity to be quite indifferent to a hundred thousand pounds. So much of the "light and sweetness" of life is attainable for that sum,—such pleasures, of the purest and noblest, are in the power of the possessor. But in this moment Valentine fully realized the fact that he had never taken the idea of this fortune into his mind—never made it part and parcel of himself, to be plucked out of his heart with anguish, and to leave a bleeding wound in the place where it had grown. ”

“ Valentine dashed amongst the group of stragglers. He pushed away the girl with the baby, the housemaid who had run out behind him, Mr. Sheldon, the cabman, every one; and in the next moment Charlotte was in his arms, and he was carrying her into the house.
He felt as if he had been in a dream; and all that exceptional force which the dreamer sometimes feels he felt in this crisis. He carried his dear burden into the study, followed by Mr. Sheldon and Diana Paget. The face that dropped upon his shoulder showed deadly white against his dark-blue coat ”

“ Inch by inch the wretched soul regains its lost inheritance; cycles must elapse before the awful sentence is fulfilled.
Our Christian faith knows no such horrors. Even for the penitent of the eleventh hour there is promise of pardon. The most earnest desire of Diana's heart was that her father should enroll himself amongst those late penitents—those last among the last who crowd in to the marriage feast, half afraid to show their shame-darkened faces in that glorious company.
If we forgive all things to old age, so much the more surely do we forgive all injuries to the fading enemy. ”

“ Sheldon. I feel too deeply to remember the conventionalities of my position. The dear girl yonder, hovering between life and death, is my promised wife. As your stepdaughter she is very dear to you, no doubt, and you are of course anxious to do your duty as her stepfather. But she is all the world to me—my one sweet memory of the past, my sole hope for the future. I will not trust her to the care of Dr. Doddleson; I claim the right to choose another physician—as that man's coadjutor, if you please. I have no wish to offend the doctor of your choice. ”