Sabine Baring-Gould

“ Then Coppinger laughed, laughed long and boisterously. His hand that held Judith's foot and the stirrup leather shook with his laughter.
"By Heaven!—You are wonderful, very wonderful. Any one who opposes you is ill-treated, knocked down and broken, or locked into a black hole in the dead of night."
Judith, in spite of her exhaustion, was obliged to smile. "You see, I must do what I can for Jamie."
"Always Jamie."
"Yes, Captain Coppinger, always Jamie. He is helpless and must be thought for. I am mother, nurse, sister to him." ”

“ That stress point is but for a moment, then the weight of the water overbalances the strain, and whirr! round plunges the wheel, and the bright foaming water is whisked about, and the buckets disgorge their contents.
It is the same with the wheel of human life. It has its periods of rapid and glad revolutions, and also its moments of supreme tension, when it is all but overstrung—when its movement is hardly perceptible. The strain put on Judith's faculties had been excessive, and now those faculties failed her, failed her absolutely. The prostration might not last long—it might last forever. ”

“ Scantlebray, inconsiderately thrusting the lamp close into the girl's face. "It can never be—yet—surely it is——"
"Judith!" exclaimed a deep voice, the sound of which sent a sudden flutter through the girl's nerves and pulses. "Judith!" and from out the darkness and falling rain plunged a man in full mantle wrapped about him and overhanging broad-brimmed hat. Without a word of excuse he snatched the light from Mrs. Scantlebray and raised it above Judith's head. ”