Mrs Hendred did not like the people around her to be unhappy. Even the sight of a housemaid crying with the pain of the toothache made her feel low, for misery had no place in her comfortable existence; and when it obtruded itself on her notice it dimmed the warm sunshine in which she basked, and quite ruined her belief in a world where everyone was contented, and affluent, and cheerful.
I may have said that I wanted to have an adventure,” replied Miss Thane. “But I never said that I wanted to be murdered in my bed.
Now, that,’ said Sophy, ‘I am very glad to know, because if ever I should desire to please you I shall know just how to set about it. I daresay I shan’t, but one likes to be prepared for any event, however unlikely.
Yet, after all, Jenny thought she had been granted more than she hoped for when she married him. He did love her: differently, but perhaps more enduringly; and he had grown to depend on her. She thought that they would have many years of quiet content: never reaching the heights, but living together in comfort and deepening friendship.
He was silent. Well! Now she knew how right she had been. He was not in the least in love with her, and very happy she was to know it, All she wanted was a suitable retreat, such as a lumber-room, or a coal-cellar, in which to enjoy her happiness to the full.
Eggs I must instantly have!” she announced. “And Lope de Vega I will not have, though in general a fine poet, but not in the kitchen!
From being a female sunk below reproach Sophy became rapidly an unconventional girl whose unaffected manners were refreshing in an age of simpers and high flights.
But that’s what he did, and if he has made up his mind to be idiotishly noble – Yes, it is going to be very difficult. I must think!
After all, life was not made up of moments of exaltation, but of quite ordinary, everyday things.
In all of this she was only partially successful, for although Nurse knew that once Miss Venetia had made up her mind she was powerless to prevent her doing whatever she liked, and was obliged to admit some faint resemblance in Damerel to the Good Samaritan, she persisted in referring to him as The Ungodly, and in ascribing his charitable behaviour to some obscure but evil motive.
Glamour might still have clung to a rakehell who abducted noble damsels, but no glamour remained about a man who had been pushed into a pond in full ball-dress.
It might have been supposed that Freddy, whose intellect was not of the first order, would have found it impossible to grasp the gist of an extremely tangled and discursive story, but once more the possession of three volatile and excitable sisters stood him in good stead.
Perhaps Charis did not realize that when one had passed through a time of terrible anxiety relief did not immediately restore the tone of one’s mind. To be sure, she herself had not expected that after the first raptures she would find herself subject to fits of dejection, and much inclined to be crotchety; but still Charis should have known better than to have enacted a tragical scene within an hour of her arrival.
She contrived, without precisely making so vulgar a boast, to convey the impression that she was escaping from courtships so persistent as to amount to persecution; and Mr Beaumaris, listening with intense pleasure, said that London was the very place for anyone desirous of escaping attention.
The landlord was trying to explain that there were a great many English people in his house, all fighting duels or having hysterics.
He paused and then said, as though the words were wrung out of him: ‘O God, Mama, I’ve made such a mull of it! What am I to do?
To listen to a poet arguing with himself – for she could scarcely have been said to have borne any part in the discussion – on the merits of blank verse as a dramatic medium was naturally a privilege of which any young lady must be proud, but there could be no denying that to talk for half an hour to a man who listened with interest to anything she said was, if not precisely a relief, certainly a welcome variation in her life.
Positively you overwhelm me!’ my lord said. ‘You oppress me with kindness, sir.
He didn’t choose between me and you, Julia: it was between me and ruin.
Bouncer, recognizing a well-wisher, got up, and thrust his cold, wet nose under her hand, assuming as he did so the soulful expression of a dog who takes but a benevolent interest in cats, livestock, and stray visitors.