In a little while it would be different, there would come tomorrow, and the next day, and another year. And we would be changed perhaps, never sitting quite like this again. Some of us would go away, or suffer, or die; the future stretched away in front of us, unknown, unseen, not perhaps what we wanted, not what we planned. This moment was safe though, this could not be touched.
Her uncle had ridden away on the moors somewhere, and a sense of freedom possessed her whenever he was gone.
First love is not always happy. It can sometimes be like a terrible illness.
If I told you I was thinking about Surrey and Middlesex I was thinking about Surrey and Middlesex. Men are simpler than you imagine, my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.
He was not staring at her anymore. He was still. He had gone. The moment of truth had vanished forever, and she would never know. What had happened was Then, was already past, in some other dimension of time, and the present was Now, part of a future he could not share. This present, this future, was all blank to him, like the empty spaces in the photograph album beside the bed, waiting to be filled. Even, she thought, if he had read my mind, which he often did, he would not have cared.
In the animal kingdom a freak was a thing of abhorrence, at once hunted and destroyed, or driven out into the wilderness.
H’mph,” growled the squire, “that’s a damned nuisance. I wanted a word or two with Mr. Joss Merlyn. Now look here, my good woman, your precious husband may have bought Jamaica Inn behind my back, in his blackguardly fashion, and we’ll not go into that again now, but one thing I won’t stand for, and that’s having all my land hereabouts made a byword for everything that’s damnable and dishonest round the countryside.
What might have been – what could have been. These are the saddest phrases in our English tongue.
No, it was done with and finished. Escape was a thing of yesterday.
The glass world was unique, a law unto itself. It had its own rules and customs, and a separate language too, handed down not only from father to son but from master to apprentice, instituted heaven knows how many centuries ago wherever the glass-makers settled – in Normandy, in Lorraine, by the Loire – but always, naturally, by forests, for wood was the glass foundry’s food, the mainstay of its existence.
I began to understand why some people could not bear the clamour of the sea. It has a mournful harping note sometimes, and the very persistence of it, that eternal roll and thunder and hiss, plays a jagged tune upon the nerves.
No lives have been lost as yet, and none of our women have been taken,” said Godolphin stiffly, “but as the fellow is a Frenchman we all realize that it is only a question of time before something dastardly occurs.
But I never dared ask Mrs. Danvers what she did about it.
Friendship and duty are two separate things,” he said, “and I put duty first. You are another generation, you wouldn’t understand.
This was more than I had hitherto endured, even from her, but the swift lash of his reply was unexpected. “Not since Ethelred,” he said, “the one who was called Unready. In fact, it was while staying with my family that the name was given him. He was invariably late for dinner.
He was folding up his napkin, pushing back his plate, and I wondered how it was he spoke so casually, as thought the matter was of little consequence, a mere adjustment of plans. Whereas to me it was a bombshell, exploding in a thousand tiny fragments.
Mary wondered how many years Aunt Patience had kept that knowledge to herself in an agony of silence. No one would ever know how greatly she had suffered. Wherever she should go in the future, the pain of that knowledge would go with her. It could never leave her alone.
I love you so much’ he whispered. ‘So much.
I am notorious,” said Dona, “for making unfortunate remarks.
We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end. We have conquered ours, or so we believe.