Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ The brain was a thing of habits, like the body; right could be a habit, and so could evil. As a man thought, so he was. For all of his childhood, and for the last ten years, Dick's mental habits had been right; his environment had been love, his teaching responsibility. Even if the door opened, then, there was only the evil thinking of two or three reckless years to combat, and the door might never open. Happiness, Lauler had said, would keep it closed, and Dick was happy........ ”

“ What had once been only his own misfortune, mischance, whatever it was, had now become of vital importance to an entire group of hitherto disinterested people. He would have to put his situation clearly before them and let them judge. ”

“ Not now. But if he's going to marry her—”
“Well, why shouldn't he?” he demanded truculently. “A good woman would be one more anchor to windward.”
She found that she could not go on. David was always incomprehensible to her when it came to Dick. Had been incomprehensible from the first. But she could not proceed without telling him that the village knew something, and what that something was; that already she felt a change in the local attitude toward Dick. He was, for one thing, not quite so busy as he had been.
She went out of the room, and sent Elizabeth to David. ”

“ Never had Lucy's window boxes been so bright, or Minnie's bread so light; the sun poured into David's sick room and turned the nurse so dazzling white in her uniform that David declared he was suffering from snow-blindness.
And David himself was improving rapidly. With the passage of each day he felt more secure. The reporter from the Times-Republican—if he were really on the trail of Dick he would have come to see him, would have told him the story. No. ”