M. E. Braddon

“ Topsparkle adores his wife with an almost servile devotion, lives only upon her smiles, follows in her footsteps like her lap-dog. I believe in his heart of hearts he is jealous of poor pampered pug, and would not regret to see the little beast expire of a surfeit of cream and kisses."
"And she—is she happy?" asked Lavendale, relaxing from simulated gaiety to moodiness.
"There I dare not answer off-hand. Who can swear to a fine lady's happiness? Her heart is a close-locked coffer, of which only her abigail or her lover has the key. ”

“ There is a stage in evil at which even virtuous love cannot save the sinner."
"And 'fore Heaven I know no more potent cure," said Herrick. "There goes Mrs. Howard, looking just a little older and deafer than when we saw her last: they say the Prince neglects her shamefully, and is more devoted to his wife than ever. Yes, Lavendale, a true-hearted woman is your only redeeming angel below the skies. But I doubt if Lady Judith belongs to the angelic order. She is a creature of passions and impulses, like yourself—a woman who would sacrifice every duty to the promptings of an undisciplined heart. ”

“ The town would change his wood-nymph into a fine lady; that sweet simplicity which was her highest charm would perish in the atmosphere of courts. How could he hope that she would be true to him when once she discovered the power of her position as an heiress and a beauty? She would be surrounded by fops and flatterers, run after by every adventurer in London. "And I shall rank among the meanest of them," thought Herrick. "What can I seem to her but an adventurer, when once she becomes worldly-wise and learns to estimate her own value? ”

“ It cannot last long; I must go back to London shortly with my friend Lavendale. I shall be swallowed in the vortex of London life, full of temptations and wickednesses of every kind. Be my good angel while you can. Elderly people like your father and your governess would never be able to understand our friendship: how pure, how holy, how secure for you, how elevating for me. Do not tell your governess of my existence, Miss Bosworth, or at least tell her not until you feel there is danger or discredit in my acquaintance. ”

“ Lavendale spent his days between London and country, rushing backwards and forwards by coach or on horseback, as whim prompted him, and in this autumn of 1726 he seemed of all men the most whimsical. London was dull and empty, half the fashionable world was at Twickenham, and the other half at Bath; yet there was always a chance of playing deep, or of getting involved in some political plot; there were always taverns, and chocolate-houses, and clubs in full swing, and a fever of party feeling in the air, which gave a certain amount of variety and excitement to life. ”

“ Yes, I confess to being doleful, the very incarnation of gloom. O Rena, forgive me, I am the most miserable of men! Here I am in this great gaudy tavern, for such a house is no better than an inn—seeing you every day, hearing your voice, near you and yet leagues away—never daring to address you freely save in such a chance moment as this, while your vigilant kinswoman sleeps; here am I, your adorer, your slave, but a pauper who dare not ask for your heart, though his own is irrevocably yours. To ask you to marry me would be to ask you to ruin yourself irretrievably. ”

“ Rena, short for Irene: that was the baby's name.
"Kind to her? yes, of course. She is all that will be left me."
"Except riches. O Roland, do not care more for your money than for her."
"She will be a great heiress," said Bosworth.
"Riches do not always bring happiness. Love her, be kind to her!"
Those were the last words the dying lips uttered. She dropped asleep soon after this, her head resting against her husband's shoulder, and so out of that dim land of slumber passed silently into that deeper darkness which living eyes have never penetrated. ”

“ Pshaw, Philter! Who believes in an actress's disinterestedness? But it is not at a ducal supper-party you would hear queer stories of Mr. Topsparkle. No one talks of the past or of the future in such uproarious society as that. Every man lives for the present moment; his hopes and his ambition are bounded by the eyes and lips that are smiling at him; his views of life are as sparkling and as transient as the bubbles on a glass of champagne, and as rosy as the deepest glow of Burgundy. ”

“ Man is too grand a creature for so limited a career. He dies ever with his mission unfulfilled, his task uncompleted. There must be, somewhere amid the mysteries of Nature, the secret of prolonged existence. Paracelsus looked for it and failed; but the world is two hundred years older since his time, and Vincenti is as deep a student as Paracelsus. But it is not that sublime secret for which I pine. My life is too worthless for me to care much about extending it; but there are occult powers for which my soul longs with a passionate longing—extended powers of will and mind, Herrick. ”

“ Thank Heaven, there are passions worth living for besides love."
"The passion of the gamester, for instance—to sit till three and four o'clock every morning at loo or faro!" suggested Herrick Durnford, with that easy, indifferent air of his, half-scornful, half-jocose, with which he made light of follies that he shared.
"Ah, but there are keener pleasures than loo and faro," said Lavendale, with an earnest look; "there are higher stakes to play for than paltry hundreds and thousands, nobler prizes to be won—gains that would set a man on a level with the gods." ”

“ How should such as you hope to hold communion with the clear light of the soul released from clay? You must bring yourself nearer the condition of the dead before you can feel their influence."
"Sublimise myself by the extinguishment of every earthly passion? Nay, my ethereal friend, at two-and-thirty that is not so easy. There is something here," lightly touching his breast, "which pleads too ardently for poor humanity—the heart, Vincenti, the passionate heart of manhood. Do not believe those who tell you that the bad Lord Lavendale has been altogether the slave of his senses. ”

“ They had never been more than admirers, those dukes and lords who applauded her nightly, and thought it honour and felicity to lose their money at hazard or lansquenet in her luxurious lodgings. The only man she had ever cared for was Roland Bosworth, though he had never been either the handsomest or the most agreeable man among her followers. But women who are admired by all the world have curious caprices; and it had been Mrs. Layburne's fancy to sacrifice herself and her career to the least distinguished of her admirers. She had her tempers, and did not make her lover's life a bed of roses. ”

“ If you are reformed, be sure you have spoiled your chances. You cannot be too wicked to please sweet simplicity. It is only experienced women of the world, like Lady Judith and me, who have a relish for virtue."
"And then only in the abstract, I'll be sworn," cried Asterley, coming to the tray for a second cup of chocolate, and devouring cakes out of a silver filigree basket. "You relish virtue in your Locke or your Addison—a stately preachment of morality in elegant Saxon-English, but you like a man to be—a man. ”

“ If a man can win independence by his brains and an inkpot, it shall go hard if I am for ever a pauper. Rich I can never be: fortunes are not made out of books: but I will earn an honest living; and then if she love me well enough to say, 'My heart and fortune are yours, Herrick,' I will not blush to accept the prize, and to wear it boldly before all the world. ”

“ Nothing was further than charity from the Squire's thoughts as he rode to Flamestead; but he was a man of reflective temper, and he always looked far ahead into the future. Ten months ago his fair young wife had died, leaving him an only child—a daughter of half a year old—and now the child was sixteen months old, and her nurse had told him that she began to pine in the silence and seclusion of a house which was like a hermitage, and gardens which were gloomy and lonesome as a desert wilderness. ”

“ Try it not upon me, Topsparkle, unless you would have me a fixture. For a man like myself, who is wearied of worldly strife and has renounced ambition, there could be no more tempting cloister than Ringwood Abbey."
"Your lordship cannot stay here too long, or come here too often," answered Topsparkle; "but I doubt the French saying holds good in this case, reculer pour mieux sauter, and that when Lord Bolingbroke talks of the cloister, he is on the eve of restoring a dynasty, and of changing the face of Europe." ”

“ Thus attended, and leaning upon Lord Lavendale's arm, Lady Judith's progress by way of Gerard Street to Soho Square had a picturesque air which is unknown in our matter-of-fact age of well-lit streets and miniature broughams. Everything in those days was on a grandiose scale; and if people spent a good deal of money, they at least had their full value in show and glitter. Those running footmen with their flaming torches, that huge blackamoor with his splendid livery, made a display that would have graced the semi-Oriental state of a Roman Empress in the decadence of the Empire. ”

“ Durnford had been riding close beside the coach, talking of music and plays with Irene; but as they approached this open ground where the light was clearest, he observed a change in her countenance. Those lovely eyes became clouded over, those lovely lips ceased to smile, and his remarks were responded to briefly, with an absent air.
"Why are you silent, dearest miss?" he asked. Lady Tredgold was snoring in her corner of the carriage, Lavendale was riding on the farther side of the road, and those two seemed almost alone. "Does yonder cold, pale planet inspire you with a gentle melancholy?" ”

“ Across the lapse of centuries how can we tell how much of this was verity and how much falsehood—where the searcher after truth left off and the impostor began? Pshaw, Jack! we live in too prosaic an age to be fooled by those old-world delusions. Is there a man or woman in this park who would not think Lord Lavendale qualified for Bedlam, if it were known that he travelled with an old Venetian necromancer in his train, and that he had a serious expectation of discovering first the transmutation of metals, and then the elixir of life? ”

“ But his lordship cut her, and she has had plenty of time to forget him," replied Ludderly.
"And she has not forgotten," said Philter, with a tragic air. He had tried the stage in his youth, and had failed ignominiously, yet still affected something of the dramatic air. "She is not the type of woman that forgets. Passion flames in those starry eyes of hers; unconquerable resolve gives form to those exquisite lips. Cleopatra must have had just such a carriage of the head, just such a queenly neck. All those charms imply an inborn imperiousness of will. ”

“ Durnford and I have come to badger you."
"'Twould be hard if you could not come to your own house, my lord," answered the old man quietly, looking up with luminous dark eyes which seemed all the more brilliant because of the snowy whiteness of the thick eyebrows and the long, drooping locks which fell over the forehead. "I will own that solitude and silence have been very precious to me in this noble old mansion. Yes, silence is a priceless boon to the searcher. In the silence of the living we can feel the companionship of the dead."
Those last words had a subduing effect upon Lavendale. ”

“ He had sat at Bolingbroke's feet, and imbibed his opinions.
The Henriade was still awaiting publication, and Francis Arouet had an eye to his subscription-list; a man at all times supple and adroit, ever able to make the best of every situation, dexterous alike as wit and poet, courtier, lover, speculator, flushed with the small social successes of his brilliant youth, secure in the friendship of royal duchesses and roué princes, accepted in a society far above his birth, envied and hated by the malignant few—witness M. de Rohan's brutal retaliation—but petted and caressed by the many. ”

“ Never had peasant or tramp accosted her rudely in all those years in which she had roamed alone, growing from childhood to womanhood, ever in the same woodland seclusion, and never knowing the shadow of weariness. Her childhood and girlhood had been passing solitary since the waif's death, but those slow monotonous years had been in no wise unhappy. Roland Bosworth had been an indulgent father, desiring nothing so much as his daughter's happiness. Had he seen her pine in her lonely life he would, at any sacrifice to himself, have changed his habits ”

“ Squire Bosworth sat with thoughtful brow, looking over pamphlets and manuscripts.
"Just as I thought," he said at last: "the fellow was a plotter, a tool of the Muggite crew, a hack scribbler, sowing the seeds of civil war and revolution with big words and fine sentences, a little Latin and a little Greek. He found he could not live upon his trash—was on the tramp for Portsmouth, I dare swear, meaning to get out of the country, to make his way to America, perhaps, before the mast; as if his wasted carcass would be worth board and lodging where thews and sinews are wanted! Poor devil! ”

“ Not one word had Durnford breathed to Lavendale about his wood-nymph. He too well knew his friend's frivolity and inconstant fancies with regard to women. A lovely heiress would have seemed a natural prey to the roué who had ever exercised a potent fascination over the weaker sex, and who deemed himself invincible. Lavendale had his own pursuits at the Manor: yawned and dawdled through the day, took a hand at piquet with Durnford of an evening, sat deep into the night in the old chapel-room with the Italian student, poring over monkish manuscripts and mediæval treatises in dog Latin. ”