Venetia

As soon as one promises not to do something, it becomes the one thing above all others that one most wishes to do.

There is nothing so mortifying as to fall in love with someone who does not share one's sentiments.

O God, I love you to the edge of madness, Venetia, but I'm not mad yet--not so mad that I don't know how disastrous it might be to you--to us both! You don't realize what an advantage I should be taking of your innocence!

I don't know what you may have seen fit to tell her, Venetia, but so far as I understand it you could think of nothing better to do than to beguile her with some farrago about wishing Damerel to strew rose-leaves for you to walk on!" Damerel, who had resumed his seat, had been staring moodily into the fire, but at these words he looked up quickly. "Rose-leaves?" His eyes went to Venetia's face, wickedly quizzing her. "But my dear girl, at this season?" "Be quiet, you wretch!" she said, blushing.

Fair Fatality, you are the most unusual female I have encountered in all my thirty-eight years!" "You can't think how deeply flattered I am!" she assured him. "I daresay my head would be quite turned if I didn't suspect that amongst so many a dozen or so may have slipped from your memory.

His attention caught, her companion raised his eyes from the book which lay open beside him on the table and directed them upon her in a look of aloof enquiry. 'What's that? Did you say something to me, Venetia?' 'Yes, love,' responded his sister cheerfully, 'but it wasn't of the least consequence, and in any event I answered for you. You would be astonished, I daresay, if you knew what interesting conversations I enjoy with myself.

...Gentlemen don't understand anything, however wise they may be.

This, said Damerel wrathfully, is the second time you have walked in just as I am about to propose to your sister!

Goodbye!" "Oh, not goodbye!" he protested. "I mean to know you better, Miss Lanyon of Undershaw!" "To be sure, it does seem a pity you should not, after such a promising start, but life, you know, is full of disappointments, and that, I must warn you, is likely to prove one of them.

The more enchanted the idyll, greater must be the pain of its ending.

How very odd, to be sure!’ ‘What is?’ She walked on, her brow a little furrowed. ‘Wishing to kiss someone you never saw before in your life. It seems quite mad-brained to me, besides showing a sad want of particularity.

Morals and medicine warred within his breast, and medicine won the day- but I dare say morals may give him a sleepless night.

Perhaps you have friends already who laugh when you do,’ she said diffidently. ‘I haven’t, and it’s important, I think – more important than sympathy in affliction, which you might easily find in someone you positively disliked.’ ‘But to share a sense of the ridiculous prohibits dislike – yes, that’s true. And rare!

Yes, love," responded his sister cheerfully, "but it wasn't of the least consequence, and in any event I answered for you. You would be astonished, I daresay, if you knew what interesting conversations I enjoy with myself.

I don’t think I am green. It’s true I only know what I’ve read in books, but I’ve read a great many books

there was something very taking in her face which owed nothing to the excellence of her features: an expression of sweetness, a sparkle of irrepressible fun, an unusually open look, quite devoid of self-consciousness.

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. She

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.

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!

Venetia had no guile, and no affectations; she knew the world only by the books she had read; experience had never taught her to doubt the sincerity of anyone who did her a kindness.

It was like a bad dream, in which people one knew quite well behaved fantastically, and one was powerless to escape from some dreadful doom.

Men – witness all the histories! – were subject to sudden lusts and violences, affairs that seemed strangely divorced from heart or head, and often more strangely still from what were surely their true characters. For them chastity was not a prime virtue: she remembered her amazement when she had discovered that so correct a gentleman and kind a husband as Sir John Denny had not always been faithful to his lady. Had Lady Denny cared? A little, perhaps, but she had not allowed it to blight her marriage. ‘Men, my love, are different from us,’ she had said once, ‘even the best of them! I tell you this because I hold it to be very wrong to rear girls in the belief that the face men show to the females they respect is their only one. I daresay, if we were to see them watching some horrid, vulgar prize-fight, or in company with women of a certain class, we shouldn’t recognise our own husbands and brothers. I am very sure we should think them disgusting!

There was nothing in store at Undershaw for his lordship but a set-down, but it was disappointing to be granted no opportunity to deliver this.

These were all things which a youth chafing against the restrictions of a polite age admired: but when he met them in a rival he bitterly resented them, because he knew himself to be at a disadvantage, playing the Corsair’s rôle in front of the Corsair himself. Had

They must have had a great deal of practice, though I don’t think it can be wholly due to practice, do you? I never met a rake before, or thought much about it, but I should suppose that a man could scarcely become one – well, not a very successful one, at all events – if he were not naturally engaging.

The most she could wring from him was a promise that he would say nothing uncivil to Mrs Scorrier unless she offered him provocation, and with this she had to try at least to be satisfied. But as what Aubrey might regard as provocation depended to a large extent upon his mood her expectations were not high;

The end of the idyll was implicit in the beginning: I at least knew that, though you might not. And also that the more enchanted the idyll the greater must be the pain of its ending. That won’t endure. Hearts don’t really break, you know.

it is so stupid to say, as Edward does, that Aubrey ought to like what he detests, because other boys do. Aubrey is himself, and no one can alter him, so what is the use of saying he ought, when he won’t?

Mrs Hendred was a very pretty woman of great good-nature and much less than commonsense.

She could only marvel at him. She had never possessed the key to his mind, and what circumstance it was that made him now so calmly confident was beyond her power to fathom. She did not believe him to be desperately in love with her; she could only suppose that having once made up his mind that she was the wife that would best suit him he had either grown too accustomed to the idea to be able easily to relinquish it, or that the good opinion he had of himself made it impossible for him to believe that she could in all seriousness reject his offer.