Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ It was, however, Harrison Miller who took the statement that morning. Lucy's cramped old hand wrote too slowly for David's impatience. Harrison Miller took it, on hotel stationery, covering the carefully numbered pages with his neat, copper-plate writing. He wrote with an impassive face, but with intense interest, for by that time he knew Dick's story.
Never, in his orderly bachelor life, of daily papers and a flower garden and political economy at night, had he been so close to the passions of men to love and hate and the disorder they brought with them. ”

“ Here perhaps David would lower his voice, for Lucy was never far away.
“Did you wear the flowers?”
“Yes, violets. I put one away to remember you by. It was funny at first. I wouldn't tell him who gave them to me.”
David would chuckle delightedly.
“That's right,” he would say. “Keep him guessing, the young rascal. We men are kittle cattle, Nellie, kittle cattle!”
Even the valet unbent to him, and inquired if the doctor needed a man at home to look after him and his clothes. David was enormously tickled. ”

“ He looked aged and pinched, and entirely hopeless. Even after his heart had quieted down and he lay still among his pillows, he gave no evidence of his old fighting spirit. He lay with his eyes shut, relaxed and passive. ”