Wilkie Collins

“ I never even heard of her till I put the torn letters together. I begin to wish you had not asked me to do it.”
“So do I. It never struck me that you would feel such extraordinary—I had almost said, such vulgar—curiosity about a worthless letter.”
This roused my temper. When a young lady is told that she is vulgar, if she has any self-conceit—I mean self-respect—she feels insulted. I said something sharp in my turn. It was in the way of argument. I do not know how it may be with other young persons, I never reason so well myself as when I am angry. ”

“ My pecuniary position being far from prosperous, I am endeavoring to obtain the vacant situation of housekeeper in a public institution the prospectus of which I inclose. You will see it is a rule of the place that a candidate must be a single woman (which I am) , and must be recommended by a clergyman. ”

“ When I had first discovered the sense of the letters, they failed to interest me. A tiresome woman, presuming on the kindness of a good-natured man to beg a favor which she had no right to ask, and receiving a refusal which she had richly deserved, was no remarkable event in my experience as my father’s secretary and copyist. But the change in his face, while he read the correspondence, altered my opinion of the letters. There was more in them evidently than I had discovered. I kept my manuscript copy—here it is ”