Grace was allowed to return by Silverbridge, and to take what was needed from Miss Prettyman. Who can tell of the mending and patching, of the weary wearing midnight hours of needlework which were accomplished before the poor girl went, so that she might not reach her friend’s house in actual rags?
When he knows,” continued Mary, who would not be put down, “that I love another man with all my heart. What will Lord Popplecourt say if I tell him that? If he says anything to me, I shall tell him. Lord Popplecourt! He cares for nothing but his coal-mines. Of course, if you bid me see him I will; but it can do no good. I despise him, and if he troubles me I shall hate him. As for marrying him, – I would sooner die this minute.
She probably cared but little for either of them. She was one of those women to whom it is not given by nature to care very much for anybody. But, of the two, she certainly cared the most for Mr. Dobbs Broughton, – because Mr. Dobbs Broughton belonged to her.
Mrs Grantly after her father’s death. This matter, therefore, had been taken out of the warden’s hands.
Gentle reader, did you ever feel yourself snubbed? Did you ever, when thinking much of your own importance, find yourself suddenly reduced to a nonentity? Such was Eleanor’s feeling now.
But he never hears of anything. If two men fought a duel in his own dining-room he would be the last man in London to know it.
But I have said it, and will say it again. I, poor, penniless, plain simple fool that I am, have been ass enough to love you, Lady Laura Standish; and I brought you up here to-day to ask you to share with me – my nothingness. And this I have done on soil that is to be all your own. Tell me that you regard me as a conceited fool, – as a bewildered idiot.
We used,” he said, “to endeavour to get someone to represent us in Parliament, who would agree with us on vital subjects, such as the Church of England and the necessity of religion. Now it seems to be considered ill-mannered to make any allusion to such subjects!
Lodgings in London are always gloomy. Gloomy colours wear better than bright ones for curtains and carpets, and the keepers of lodgings in London seem to think that a certain dinginess of appearance is respectable. I never saw a London lodging in which any attempt at cheerfulness had been made, and I do not think that any such attempt, if made, would pay.
When he entered the drawing-room she was sitting alone, in a large, low chair, made without arms, so as to admit the full expansion of her dress, but hollowed and rounded at the back, so as to afford her the support that was necessary to her. She had barely spoke three words since she had left the dining-room, but the time had not passed heavily with her.
No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent and be tormented.
Marry Oswald, and be your own mistress.” “I mean to be my own mistress without marrying Oswald, though I don’t see my way quite clearly as yet. I think I shall set up a little house of my own, and let the world say what it pleases. I suppose they couldn’t make me out to be a lunatic.
He has gone, Mamma,′ she said, as she entered the breakfast-room. ‘And now we’ll go back to our work-a-day ways. It has been all Sunday for me the last six weeks.
Of course there was.” “Of course there was. And Eugene Aram, when he murdered a man in Bulwer’s novel, turned the matter over in his mind before he did it?
What!” said his sensible enemies, “is Johnny not to be taught to read because he does not like it?” “Johnny must read by all means,” would the doctor answer; “but is it necessary that he should not like it? If the preceptor have it in him, may not Johnny learn, not only to read, but to like to learn to read?
Fighting! There’s no fighting wanted, as you know well enough. Men don’t fight nowadays.
Of one small circumstance that had occurred, he felt quite sure that Mr. Kennedy knew nothing.
No one ever on seeing Mr Crawley took him to be a happy man, or a weak man, or an ignorant man, or a wise man.
It was ludicrous and almost painful to see Mr Palliser wandering about and counting the boxes, as though he could do any good by that. At this special crisis of his life he hated his papers and figures and statistics, and could not apply himself to them. He, whose application had been so unremitting, could apply himself now to nothing. His world had been brought to an abrupt end, and he was awkward at making a new beginning. I believe that they all three were reading novels before one o’clock.
But the strength of the minority consisted, not in the fact that the majority against them was small, but that it was decreasing. How quickly does the snowball grow into hugeness as it is rolled on, – but when the change comes in the weather how quickly does it melt, and before it is gone become a thing ugly, weak, and formless!