Marcus Clarke

“ Yet, as the convicts themselves said, "a man was never safe with the Captain"; for, after drinking and joking with them, as the Sir Oracle of some public-house whose hostess he delighted to honour, he would disappear through a side door just as the constables burst in at the back, and show himself as remorseless, in his next morning's sentence of the captured, as if he had never entered a tap-room in all his life. His superiors called this "zeal"; his inferiors "treachery". For himself, he laughed. "Everything is fair to those wretches," he was accustomed to say. ”

“ She put out her hand, as if nothing had happened. "Good night, Captain Frere. It's a bargain, then?"
"A bargain."
"You have a long walk home. Will you have some brandy?"
"I don't care if I do," he said, advancing to the table, and filling his glass. "Here's a good voyage to you!"
Sarah Purfoy, watching him, burst into a laugh. "Human beings are queer creatures," she said. "Who would have thought that we had been calling each other names just now? I say, I'm a vixen when I'm roused, ain't I, Maurice?" ”

“ She isn't the bright-faced baby she was when they sent her here to 'reform', and when Lieutenant Frere wanted a new housemaid from the Factory! Call for her!—call! do you hear? Ask any one of those beasts whom you lash and chain for Lucy Barnes. He'll tell you all about her—ay, and about many more—many more poor souls that are at the bidding of any drunken brute that has stolen a pound note to fee the Devil with! Oh, you good God in Heaven, will You not judge this man?"
Frere trembled. He had often witnessed this creature's whirlwinds of passion, but never had he seen her so violent as this. ”

“ I'll go to this girl you want to marry, and tell her all I know of you. I have seen her in the streets—have seen her look the other way when I passed her—have seen her gather up her muslin skirts when my silks touched her—I that nursed her, that heard her say her baby-prayers (O Jesus, pity me!) —and I know what she thinks of women like me. ”

“ His daughter was a good match for any man; and many ensigns and lieutenants, cursing their hard lot in "country quarters", many sons of settlers living on their father's station among the mountains, and many dapper clerks on the civil establishment envied Maurice Frere his good fortune. Some went so far as to say that the beautiful daughter of "Regulation Vickers" was too good for the coarse red-faced Frere, who was noted for his fondness for low society, and overbearing, almost brutal demeanour. No one denied, however, that Captain Frere was a valuable officer. ”

“ Anything rather than what she was—a dissolute, half-maddened woman, praying for the pardon of her convict husband.
Maurice Frere flung her off with an oath. "Get up!" he cried brutally, "and stop that nonsense. I tell you the man's as good as dead for all I shall do to save him." ”

“ Sylvia, in her purity and excellence, was so far above him, that in raising his eyes to her, he lost sight of all the sordid creatures to whose level he had once debased himself, and had come in part to regard the sins he had committed, before his redemption by the love of this bright young creature, as evil done by him under a past condition of existence, and for the consequences of which he was not responsible. ”