Various

“ If George Ranger heard you, he would have you hanged in front of the Star and Garter."
"Who is George Ranger?" said Sheila with an air, as if she had said, "Do you know that I am the daughter of the King of Borva, and whoever touches me will have to answer to my papa, who is not afraid of any George Ranger?"
"He is a great lord who hangs all persons who disturb the deer in this Park."
"But why do they not go away?" said Sheila impatiently. "I have never seen any deer so stupid. It is their own fault if they are disturbed: why do they remain so near to people and to houses?" ”

“ How sweet and fresh the air was, even in Kensington, when Sheila, having dressed and come down stairs, and after having dutifully kissed Mrs. Lavender and bade her good-bye, went outside with her husband! It was like coming back to the light of day from inside the imaginary coffin in which she had fancied herself placed. A soft west wind was blowing over the Park, and a fairly clear sunlight shining on the May green of the trees. And then she hung on her husband's arm, and she had him to speak to instead of the terrible old woman who talked about dying. ”

“ Looking at her a moment from head to foot as she lay in her unclean garments, he turned to where the other woman stood, a ray of light from the window shining on her fair hair and innocent face: "Do you know that I am Hugh Guinness, Kitty?"
"I knew that long ago."
"This," nodding down at the pallet, "is my wife. Now do you know why I could not go home to my father or to you?"
"God help us!" ejaculated Pollard. The next moment, remembering himself, he put his hand on McCall's shoulder: "I understand. When you were a boy, eh? Never mind: every man has his own trouble to carry." ”

“ One day, as the major, bound on some errand in the interest of a Frenchman lying wounded in our hospital, was majestically riding his superb stallion Garryowen down the Champs Élysées, his long tawny side-whiskers waving gently in the breeze, his wiry frame erect as a ramrod, the blue regulation-coat buttoned close to his throat with American buttons, the International brassard on his arm and the ambulance shield on his cap,—as the major, I say, sailed down in this state, he was hailed by one of the chiefs of the French ambulance, which just then was all powerful in Paris. ”

“ He does not see those things in the eyes of women he is not in love with; but when in after years he is carelessly regarding this or the other woman, some chance look, some brief and sudden turn of expression, will recall to him, as with a stroke of lightning, all the old wonder-time, and his heart will go nigh to breaking to think that he has grown old, that he has forgotten so much, and that the fair, wild days of romance and longing are passed away for ever.
"Ingram thinks I don't understand you yet, Sheila," he said to her after they had got home and their friend had gone. ”

“ Catharine was standing by the window. The wind blew in chilly and strong, while Mr. Muller behind her sipped his tea and ambled in his talk. Crossing the meadow, going down the road, she saw the large figure of a man in a loose light overcoat, who swung in his gait and carried his hat in his hand as a boy would do. Even if he had loved her, she could not, like Maria, have gone a step to meet him, nor intoned the Song of Solomon. But he did not love her. ”

“ A gloomier picture could not well be conceived; and Sheila, chilled with the long and wet sail and bewildered by the noise and bustle of the harbor, was driven to the hotel with a sore heart and a downcast face.
"This is not like London, Frank?" she said, pretty nearly ready to cry with disappointment.
"This? No. Well, it is like a part of London, certainly, but not the part you will live in."
"But how can we live in the one place without passing the other and being made miserable by it? There was no part of Oban like this." ”

“ She was the woman whom Doctor McCall loved. By the time night came Kitty had a maddening desire to see again this woman that he loved—to touch her, hear her speak. She had been used to regard her as a disagreeable bore, but now she looked on her as a woman set apart from all the world. She had made a poor excuse to come up to the Water-cure: now that she was there she half forgot it. Maria's delicate face, her quick grace of motion, her clear, well-bred voice, were so many stabs to Kitty, each of which touched the quick. Maria's hair hung loosely over her shoulders: it was very soft and thick. ”

“ When Sheila's attention wandered away from the talk of her companions she could not help listening for the sound of the waves; and as there was no such message coming to her from the great wooded plain without, her fancy took her away across that mighty country she had traveled through, and carried her up to the island of Loch Roag, until she almost fancied she could smell the peat-smoke in the night-air, and listen to the sea, and hear her father pacing up and down the gravel outside the house, perhaps thinking of her as she was thinking of him. ”

“ I said long ago that the beauty of Hohenfels' character, like that of the precious opal, was owing to a defect in his organization. The baron retains his girlish expression, his blue eye, and his light hair of the kind that never turns gray: he is still slender, but much bent. He went over to the fireplace and crouched before the coals that were flickering there still. Then he said, with that gentle, half-laughing voice, "Take care, Paul, old boy! Children who show sense too early never grow, they say: by parity of argument, men who are poetical too late in life never get their senses." ”

“ He talked about the tricks of fashionable women in a mocking way that Sheila did not quite like; and of course she naturally threw the blame on Mrs. Lavender. It was only when this old lady exerted a godless influence over him that her good boy talked in such a fashion. There was nothing of that about him up in Lewis, nor yet at home in a certain snug little smoking-room which these two had come to consider the most comfortable corner in the house. Sheila began to hate women who used lip-salve, and silently recorded a vow that never, never, never would she wear anybody's hair but her own. ”

“ For if a man reflects on the changes and transformations which follow one another like wave after wave, and their rapidity, he will despise everything which is perishable.' Do you understand that?"
"Yes," said Sheila, and it seemed to her that she was being suffocated. Would not the gray walls burst asunder and show her one glimpse of the blue sky before she sank into unconsciousness? The monotonous tones of this old woman's voice sounded like the repetition of a psalm over a coffin. ”

“ When I think of the husband's manly care in thus abiding by the wife, I find it hard to reconcile it with the fact that he only valued his life and hers at a few dollars—not enough to compensate the traveler for the loss incurred as demurrage to the fishermen.
Now Last Island is but a low sandy reef, on which a few straggling fruit trees try to keep the remembrance of its bygone beauty. It is as bare and desolate as the bones of those who filled its halls in the cataclysm of that dreadful night—bones which now waste to whiteness on sterile shores or are wrought into coral in the under-sea. ”

“ At sundown that evening Doctor McCall was piloted by little Herr Bluhm to his office; the Herr, according to his wont, sternly solemn, McCall disposed to be hilarious, as suited the pleasant temperature of the evening.
"Club, eh? Inner Light? Oh yes, I've no objections. One picks up good ideas here, there, anywhere. Meets in your office?"
"Yes—a shabby, vulgar place to the outer eye, but so many noble souls have there struggled out of darkness into light, such mighty Truths have been born there which will guide the age, that to me it is the very Holy Ground of Ideas." ”

“ Then they went along Oxford street; and there were crowded omnibuses taking young men into the city, while all the pavements were busy with hurrying passers-by. What multitudes of unknown faces, unknown to her and unknown to each other! These people did not speak: they only hurried on, each intent upon his own affairs, caring nothing, apparently, for the din around them, and looking so strange and sad in their black clothes in the pale and misty sunlight.
"You are in a trance, Sheila," he said. ”

“ She made her home with Kitty.
"A fine woman," old Peter said the morning after she was gone.
"Never knew a woman with a finer mind," said Hugh. "Nor many men."
"She nurses that dog as if it were a baby," said Kitty sharply. "It's silly! It's disgusting!"
Peter twanged his bow on the porch, looking down over the great farm-slopes stretching away in the morning light.
"We have everything to make life good to us, Hugh," he said after Kitty had gone. "And the best thing, to my notion, is an old-fashioned woman in the house, with no notion of ruling, like that Muller girl and her set." ”

“ Half an hour or an hour hence she will be free, and the junk dropping down to sea with the drugs in her. All at once a shriek or yell of "Hard aport!" and a great iron outward-bound steamer from Hong-Kong bursts into the unwieldy Chinaman, goes crunching through her like ripping pasteboard; tears her open; snarls through steamy nostrils and cindery fiery mouth, and growls over her wreck. And the sodden, stupefied merchantman, as if drunk with opium, goes yelling and staggering with her sleepy drugs to the bottom, and stays there, sycee silver and all. ”

“ McCall perceived Maria near the window, the dusky twilight bringing out with fine effect her delicate, beautiful face. He turned quickly to the others, looking for the popular type of the Advanced Female, in loose sacque and men's trousers, with bonnet a-top, hair cut short, sharp nose and sharper voice. She was not there. A third of the women were Quakers, with their calm, benign faces for the most part framed by white hair—women who, having fought successfully against slavery, when that victory was won had taken up arms against the oppressors of women with devout and faithful purpose. ”

“ The wrecker on the Florida reefs, who steps from the Peninsula into the marine world, will tell you there is nothing so like the land as the water. The crystal atmosphere of this land of meridional spring, the masses of tawny green in forests of the pine, and the deeper foliage of the live-oak and wild-orange, even that fire of flower in phaenogamous plants peculiar to the Peninsula, have their fellowship and counterparts in the lustrous scenery of the submarine world. Even the beauty of moon-like lakes and river springs is realized in the salt envelope of the under-world. ”

“ The air was fragrant with magnolia and orange bloom, the gardens glittering with the burning beauty of tropical flower, jessamine thickets and voluptuous grape arbors, the golden wine-like sun pouring an intoxicating balm over it; graceful white cottages festooned with vines, with curving chalet or Chinese roofs colored red; pinnacled arbors and shadowy retreats of espaliers pretty as a coral grove; and a fair shining hotel in the midst, with arcades and porches and galleries--the very dream of ease and luxury, as delicate and trim as if made of cut paper in many forms of prettiness. ”

“ As Dora Hanchett and Posey stood together upon a green knoll, following with their eyes the winding trail that their feet were to descend on the morrow, they descried, toiling slowly toward them, one of those returning bands of unsuccessful and discouraged veterans—the reflux of the great wave of immigration constantly pouring into the golden valley—which they had frequently met in the course of their long journey. As the cavalcade drew nearer, Dora's attention fixed itself upon a curious figure that brought up the rear. ”

“ At Wilmington the system of the Delaware railroads begins: it spreads out over the peninsula of Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland like a huge left hand. The thumb touches Chestertown and Centreville, the fore finger Oxford, the middle finger Cambridge, the ring finger Crisfield, the little finger Lewes; and this hand gathers into the main road every year millions of baskets of peaches, and millions more of oysters in baskets and sacks, and crates of berries, and car-loads of hardwood and lumber. Under the influence of these roads the sleepy peninsula is beginning a new career. ”

“ Jörgel, who, with the utmost determination, resolved to fulfill his duty as guide, marshaled us up this old creaking ladder, then up a second, until we stopped in an open gallery sheltered by the wooden eaves, where a feeble old woman nursed an idiot child in the gloaming. And yet what a landscape to relieve this desolate foreground!—slumbrous mountains, dewy meadows, peaceful villages, over which the calm of Sunday lay. We stood drinking in the tranquil scene, when a woman in blue apron and of rapid motion quickly touched my elbow with a large key ”

“ In the mean time go up stairs and get your things off: that young person below has breakfast ready, I dare say."
"But you have not shown me yet where Mr. Ingram lives," said Sheila before she went to the door.
"Oh, that is miles away. You have only seen a little bit of London yet. Ingram lives about as far away from here as the distance you have just come, but in another direction."
"It is like a world made of houses," said Sheila, "and all filled with strangers. But you will take me to see Mr. Ingram?" ”