M. E. Braddon

“ As the days went on, and day after day was spent in Christabel's company—almost as it were alone with her, for Miss Bridgeman and Major Bree were but as figures in the background—Angus felt as if he were at the beginning of a new life—a life filled with fresh interests, thoughts, hopes, desires, unknown and undreamed of in the former stages of his being. Never before had he lived a life so uneventful—never before had he been so happy. It surprised him to discover how simple are the elements of real content—how deep the charm of a placid existence among thoroughly loveable people! ”

“ She had tried to put away every thought of it while she talked with her aunt. Angus had urged her beforehand to be perfectly frank, to tell Mrs. Tregonell what a mere wreck of a life it was which her lover offered her: but she had refused.
"Let that be our secret," she said, in her low sweet voice. "We want no one's pity. We will bear our sorrow together. And, oh, Angus! my faith is so strong. God, who has made me so happy by the gift of your love, will not take you from me. If—if your life is to be brief, mine will not be long." ”

“ Christabel, my past life has not been what a stainless Christian would call a good life. I have not been so bad as Tristan. I have violated no sacred charge—betrayed no kinsman. I suppose I have been hardly worse than the common run of young men, who have the means of leading an utterly useless life. I have lived selfishly, unthinkingly—caring for my own pleasure—with little thought of anything that was to come afterwards, either on earth or in heaven. But all that is past and done with. My wild oats are sown; I have had enough of youth and folly. ”

“ She thought of him as she lay awake for the first hour of the still night, watching the fire fade and die, and listening to the long roll of the waves, hardly audible at Mount Royal amidst all the commonplace noises of day, but heard in the solemn silence of night. She let her fancies shape a vision of her aunt's vanished youth—that one brief bright dream of happiness, so miserably broken!—and wondered and wondered how it was possible for any one to outlive such a grief. Still more incredible did it seem that any one who had so loved and so lost could ever listen to another lover ”

“ In her wide charity, in that power to think and feel for others, which was the highest gift of her rich sweet soul, Stella Mayne seemed to Christabel as important a factor in this life-problem as herself or Angus. She thought of her tenderly, picturing her as a modern Gretchen, tempted by an early and intense love, much more than by the devil's lure of splendour and jewels—a poor little Gretchen at seventeen and sixpence a week, living in a London garret, with no mother to watch and warn, and with wicked old Marthas in plenty to whisper bad advice. ”

“ To be told that her niece's future husband—the man for whose sake her whole scheme of life had been set aside, the man whom Christabel and she had so implicitly trusted—was a fashionable libertine—the lover of an actress—the talk of the town—was a revelation that changed the whole colour of life.
"Are you sure that this is true?" she asked, falteringly.
"My dear creature, do I ever say anything that isn't true? There is no need to invent things. God knows the things people do are bad enough, and wild enough, to supply conversation for everybody. ”

“ To see a powerful play—really well acted—such acting as we have seen—is to live a new life from end to end in a few hours. It is like getting the essence of a lifetime without any of the actual pain—for when the situation is too terrible, one can pinch oneself and say—it is only a dream—an acted dream."
"If you like powerful plays—plays that make you tremble and cry—you would not care twopence for 'Cupid and Psyche,'" said Major Bree. "It is something between a burlesque and a fairy comedy—a most frivolous kind of entertainment, I believe." ”

“ He had a mind which could only grasp life in the concrete—an intellect that required to deal with actualities—people, coats, hats, boots, dinner, park-hack—just as little children require actual counters to calculate with.
He subsided into a chair behind Miss Courtenay, and, the box being a large one, remained there for the rest of the play—to the despair of a companion youth in the stalls, who looked up ever and anon, vacuous and wondering, and who resembled his friend as closely as a well-matched carriage-horse resembles his fellow—grooming and action precisely similar. ”

“ Think of that, Christabel! When you are happy with him to see Death grinning behind his shoulder—to watch that spectacle which is of all Nature's miseries the most awful—the slow decay of human life—a man dying by inches—not death, but dissolution! If my malady were heart-disease, and you knew that at some moment—undreamt of—unlooked for—death would come, swift as an arrow from Hecate's bow, brief, with no loathsome or revolting detail—then I might say, 'Let us spend my remnant of life together.' But consumption, you cannot tell what a painful ending that is! ”

“ Tregonell, whose health, long delicate, had been considerably damaged by her duties as chaperon. "When you are going anywhere with Angus, I like to be seen with you; but to-night, with the Major and Jessie, I shall not be wanted. I can enjoy an evening's rest."
"But do you enjoy that long, blank evening, Auntie?" asked Christabel, looking anxiously at her aunt's somewhat careworn face. People who have one solitary care make so much of it, nurse and fondle it, as if it were an only child. ”

“ So now, just when London life was at its gayest and brightest, when the moonlit city after midnight looked like fairy-land, and the Thames Embankment, with its long chain of glittering lamps, gleaming golden above the sapphire river, was a scene to dream about, Mr. Hamleigh had to order his portmanteau and a hansom, and drive from the Albany to one of the great railway stations in the Euston Road, and to curl himself up in his corner of the limited mail, scarcely to budge till he was landed at Inverness. It was hard to leave Christabel, though it were only for a week. ”

“ Some men love a girl for half a lifetime before they win her."
"But it was not my privilege to know Christabel at the beginning of my life," replied Angus. "I made the most of my opportunities by loving her the moment I saw her."
"It is impossible to be angry with you," sighed Mrs. Tregonell. "You are so like your father."
That was one of the worst hardships of the case. Mrs. Tregonell could not help liking the man who had thwarted the dearest desire of her heart. She could not help admiring him, and making comparisons between him and Leonard—not to the advantage of her son. ”

“ Christabel kissed her and departed, Randie following to the door of her chamber—such a pretty room, with old panelled walls painted pink and grey, old furniture, old china, snowy draperies, and books—a girl's daintily bound books, selected and purchased by herself—in every available corner; a neat cottage piano in a recess, a low easy-chair by the fire, with a five-o'clock tea-table in front of it; desks, portfolios, work-baskets—all the frivolities of a girl's life; but everything arranged with a womanly neatness which indicated industrious habits and a well-ordered mind. ”

“ The same man will be ever so much fresher in mind, will have ever so much more zest for life, when he comes to be forty—for then he will have entered upon those calmer enjoyments of middle age which may last him till he is eighty. But at eight-and-twenty there is a death-like calmness of feeling. Youth is gone. He has consumed all the first fruits of life—spring and summer, with their wealth of flowers, are over; only the quiet autumn remains for him, with her warm browns and dull greys, and cool, moist breath. ”

“ Amongst the substantial sensuous forms of her companions this Psyche moved like a being from the spirit world.
"Oh!" cried Christabel, almost with a gasp, "how perfectly lovely!"
"Yes; she's very pretty, isn't she?" muttered the Major, tugging at his grey moustache, and glaring at the unconscious Psyche from his lurking place at the back of the box.
"Pretty is not the word. She is the realization of a poem."
Jessie Bridgeman said nothing. She had looked straight from Psyche to the Major, as he grunted out his acquiescence, and the troubled expression of his face troubled her. ”

“ This time Major Bree went with them—a capital companion for a country ramble, being just enough of a botanist, archæologist, and geologist, to leaven the lump of other people's ignorance, without being obnoxiously scientific. Mr. Hamleigh was delighted with that noble stretch of level sand, with the long rollers of the Atlantic tumbling in across the low rocks, and the bold headlands behind—spot beloved of marine painters—spot where the gulls and the shags hold their revels, and where man feels himself but a poor creature face to face with the lonely grandeur of sea, and cliff, and sky. ”

“ He has never belonged to me as he has belonged to you—it is no shame for me to renounce him—grief and pain—yes, grief and pain unspeakable—but no disgrace. He has sinned, and he must atone for his sin. I will not be the impediment to your marriage."
"But if you were to give him up he might not marry me: men are so difficult to manage," faltered the actress, aghast at the idea of such a sacrifice, seeing the whole business in the light of circumstances unknown to Miss Courtenay.
"Not men with conscience and honour," answered Christabel, with unshaken firmness. ”

“ The Somerset House young man stole a glance at FitzPelham, and smiled meaningly; but the amiable FitzPelham was only vacuous.
"Of course you have seen this play," said Mrs. Tregonell, turning to Lady Cumberbridge. "You see everything, I know?"
"Yes; I make it my business to see everything—good, bad, and indifferent," answered the strong-minded dowager, in a voice which would hardly have shamed the Lord Chancellor's wig, which those Thurlow-like eyebrows so curiously suggested. "It is the sole condition upon which London life is worth living. ”

“ Christabel, quick to observe the woman whose existence had ruined her life, noted everything, from the small perfectly-shaped head—shaped for beauty rather than mental power—to the little arched foot in its pearl-coloured silk stocking, and grey satin slipper. For the first time in her life she beheld a woman whose chief business in this world was to look her loveliest, at all times and seasons, for friend or foe—for whom the perfection of costume was the study and delight of life—who lived and reigned by the divine right of beauty. ”

“ Christabel remembered, with a sharp pang of jealousy, that her lover had never so written in any book he had given her. She ignored the change which a year or two may make in a man's character, when he has reached one of the turning points of life; and how a graver deeper phase of feeling, less eager to express itself in other people's flowery language, succeeds youth's fervid sentiment. ”

“ Let me drink the cup of pleasure to the dregs where we are. This champagne has a magical taste, like the philter which Tristan and Iseult were so foolish as to drink while they sailed across from Ireland to this Cornish shore. Don't be alarmed, Miss Bridgeman, I am not going to empty the bottle. I am not an educated tourist—have read neither Black nor Murray, and I am very slow about taking in ideas. Even after all you have told me, I am not clear in my mind as to which is the castle and which the chapel, and which the burial-ground. Let us finish the afternoon dawdling about Tintagel. ”