"The Duke's Wager" / "The Abandoned Bride" / "Viscount Vagabond"

Edith Layton 处女作，难怪手法这么特别，从头到尾第三者戏份多得喧宾夺主 （死要面子的Sinjin 想‘智取’Regina 做情妇） 之外，全程几乎都是心理活动，dissolute Duke of Torquay 和不谙世事一无所靠的bluestocking Regina 各自旷日持久地灵魂拷问能否有honor。 Torquay货真价实地强迫良家妇女，让她被扫地出门，开始被描得很黑，但回庄园看女儿召回旧日奶妈的redemption arc 让人信服。两人会面不多但化学反应激烈张力十足。语言老道精辟，（“a remarkable way with words”，）narrator 语调不动声色而略有嘲讽，如后劲十足让人上头的陈酿。

• “What a fool thing to do,” she sighed in disgust, “flying off like a true clothhead, decked out like what I thought was a London lady, only to find myself taken for the Queen of the Cyprians.”
• The day he took an unsuitable wife, a girl of no surviving parents and French descent, the two beleaguered families put their heads together and soon were able to ship the changeling son and his portionless wife out to the school where a position had been found for him.
• acquaintances of her same age, none of her class. For in truth, she had no class to which she belonged. She had the manner and grace of a lady, the education of a young gentleman, and the family background of sober, strict bourgeois merchants.
• A fortune acquired as impeccably and easily as his birth and lineage, that was the hallmark of a true gentleman, and he would fight savagely to keep both his fortune and his title impeccable in the eyes of Society.
• “I see,” he said softly, “that age has not withered you. I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner.” Her back stiffened, “But custom will stale me, sir. I take leave to tell you to get out.”
• “Why,” he laughed, “here we are, in the midst of a daring infamously vile abduction, and you sit there and discourse at me, you reason and explain as if we were in a schoolroom.
• Your Grace, only answer me one question please, only one, and then I will…then I can speak no more. You have been trained to give. You have been used to taking. But could you ever…sell yourself? And if you could not, can you try to understand why I cannot?”
• That you can forge a decent place for yourself in this world without using all those ‘feminine’ graces that you claim to be unaware of. That you can, homeless, friendless, moneyless, keep yourself from starvation with ‘honor.’ Give me a living definition of the word, Regina.
• here she smiled, for this little cockerel, with his spare white body, to call her lavish configurations “little” was very amusing, but pleasant),
• He had named the game, but he had not really wanted to play it. He found himself, as he had said, now both scorekeeper and judge, inventor of the rules and keeper of the tally. But still, he had not planned it.
• By his decision to allow the creature to stand in the cold night, he had both signaled his innocence of the affair to his master and washed his hands of the situation, even though he had certainly known of its importance to the Marquis.
• Somehow, the lateness of the hour, her own weariness, and the otherworldly quality of her situation made her for the first time feel volitionless, without concern, at last, for her own fate.
• It added an extra fillip to the game. Yes, he smiled, Torquay, it is an excellent game.
• Jason, for you see, he is the only man of my acquaintance to have ever made a totally, neither financially nor matrimonially induced, but gratuitous, indecent proposition to me. It was wonderful for my vanity, although I do feel he offered just to cheer me up.
• what an extraordinary beauty it is that even the cold enhances. This inclement weather has only brought a rosy glow to your alabaster cheek, only shined your eyes till they sparkle like the sea on a turbulent day.” She walked up to him, after that first moment of surprise, and said, almost before she was aware of it herself, “Can you not speak straight out? Must everything be couched in that sinister poetry you affect?”
• For she could still not accept that he did all he did out of sheer perverse amusement. Certainly she could, she thought, know him. And all that she had been raised to believe told her that no creature she could know, could still remain an enemy to her.
• He entertained her with anecdotes, he charmed her with rumors, he quoted poetry, and when she capped his verse with the next line, he capped her quotation once again. He showed her a glittering treasurehouse of a mind, but he showed her not one glimpse of the shadows within.
• She pulled herself away from him and, trying to keep up a light note, said, “But it suits you too.” “Only because this afternoon is aware of the signal honor I have given it. I do not go abroad too much by day, see how the sun has tried so valiantly to flatter me, to convince me of its good offices?
• It is only those we hope to win that we put ourselves out for; those we have already added to our list of conquests, we can afford to ignore. <> Still, once we have a friend, we do not ignore him, rather we are at ease. There is comfort in not having always to be on one’s best behavior.”
• I will pit the demands of that body against all the high reasonings of that well-furnished mind.
• And why should I care that the world is determined to bring her up as a replica of her mother? It is, after all, only a case of one artificial flower reproducing another, he reflected.
• We can’t tolerate that at all. For I think, he sighed to himself, that it will result in a kind of death, one crack in that frozen void and, like a rushing spring thaw, I will be washed away in those unleashed torrents. It does no good to undam that which has been safely secured for so long. And for what, he laughed, for one poor, untried, untitled, unworldly female who has too many scruples, and a head full of bookish morality, and who, moreover, has not had enough temptation put in her way of becoming a saint?
• “Not from your grave, my dear Pickett, but rather from a night’s sleep, for I swear you have not changed a hair.”
• Call me ‘wretch,’ then, or ‘rogue,’ though I’d prefer ‘Jason,’ but do not bury me and our past under such a heap of civility.
• “Well,” continued Miss Pickett in ringing tones, “I can distinctly remember being more circumspect myself. I was fond of sculpting mountains in them, and your father, I recall, had a decided partiality for creating opposing continental armies, with a river of gravy separating the warring factions.”
• And, of course, you knew to a nicety, what her reaction would be, as you always seem to know what people’s reactions will be.” “I am a knowing one,” the Duke answered somberly, carving a small round disk from the apple. “Although ‘nicety’ is seldom a term applied to me.”
• Of how she had toughened herself, had cultivated her astringent personality. She had hidden her concern for his bruises, both physical and mental, so that she would not smother him, cosset him, soften him, and all so that he could grow strong enough to face the realities she had so successfully hidden from him until that day he had escaped her notice and burst in upon his mother at her sport.
• There was that in her which he would not have made up, that which he would not, left on his own, have imagined. That curious moral rectitude, that gallant and naive assumption that there was such a thing in her world as honor, as fair play.
• And then, there in the doorway he saw St. John, the lofty Marquis of Bessacarr, regarding him with loathing. And in the throes of his own strange exultant humiliation, his own soul wincing, he had whispered fiercely to the Marquis, “What? Distaste, Sinjin? But wait a few years, my dear boy, and you will find yourself pursuing the same sport.
• “It is not an ungodly hour of the night,” she countered. “It is, rather, an extremely godly hour of the morning. Old bones do not care for long rest, knowing that a longer one awaits.
• And you came to me, with tears in your eyes, and said, ‘Pickett, at least congratulate me, for I’ve won.’ Is it to be another such triumph?” He stared down at her, his face gray as the uncertain light. “What matter?” he spoke softly. “It will be a wager won. And,” he continued, “surely you do not begrudge me victory?” And so I do, my lad, she thought silently as he gave her his arm to lead her in to breakfast. I begrudge you all such triumph, and all your bitter victories.
• A kiss must tender up all secrets.
• One of the things I dislike the most, save you, my friend, is admitting an error in judgment, but it does seem that she has misjudged you as completely as I have erred in my estimation of her. But you see, Sinjin,” the Duke went on, “it is only fair. I claimed her first. She is mine. And the only other moral justification I have, if you must have one, is that I have never lied about it. I have been extremely candid about my intentions. While you, with the same intentions, are spinning a web of lies so complicated…ah it does not bear discussion any further. Have done, Sinjin, turn her loose. I come to claim her now.”
• I do not think that either your or my spirit could grow in such a relationship. I am not such a person. Therefore, I would not be right for you either. I thank you for all past favors. I am afraid I cannot remain to be your Obedient Servant, Regina Analise Berryman.”
• For I am about to make an enormous sacrifice, you know, and no one, no one would believe it. Least of all myself. But you have quite turned me around. You have evidently magicked me.”
• She wanted to laugh and cry with him. He had entered her life and brought with him life, and she had the feeling that if he left now, he would take with him part of her life. She no more understood him than she understood herself, but now, in the heightened state of awareness that she had reached through turmoil and weariness, only her instincts still worked for her. And she knew that she did not want to leave him.
• If you take me, you must take me completely. My money and my life, you little highwayman, for it would be a real marriage, of mind and body. Now answer, just one syllable, but answer,” he said. And then prevented any answer by covering her lips with his own.
• What a lovely pair she has to choose from! A dissipated Duke, and a slightly used Marquis. What a noble pair!
• At least His Grace was willing to have me, common name and all.” “‘Love is not love which…alteration finds,” the Duke quoted softly. ＜＞　I might say that you would leave no room in my admittedly small heart for any others. There simply would be no more room. That I yearn for some truth. Some end to this unending game I have played with my life. All that I might say.

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Another tangled misunderstanding: Lord Stafford thought Julia was the cause of his nephew Robin's self-imposed exile on the continent while the truth is: "He was a nobleman, she was a commoner. And not only a commoner, but one who had totally ruined her reputation by running off in an abandoned manner with a gentleman. Not only a gentleman either, but one who was Nicholas’s nephew and who for some reason had told his uncle how perfidious and cruel she was. And not only did Nicholas believe his nephew, but so much so that he had deceived her, abused her, entrapped her, and now paid her to confront his nephew." It's a pleasure to read Layton because her characters are so very well-spoken under duress.

• What sort of person could prefer a working field in spring to a carefully tended garden? Mrs. Bryce’s governess-companion could, and did. She stood at the fence rail and saw the radiant yellow of the fields shouting back at the sunlight and thought that she had never seen such beauty.
• But Julia feared rejection as she feared nothing else in the world, and sensing rejection, she had to be the one to cut the ties first.
• For with all her resolve, Miss Hastings was only a very young woman still, and at twenty years of age she might be forgiven for making a noble gesture ineptly in the secret hopes that it would be seen as such and refused.
• with the sun increasing in strength, promising summer and stealing away resolve as that vagabond season always did,
• she said with more spirit, as if the very mention of her family itself had called them all back to her in truth and that they stood ranged beside her now to shore her confidence,
• yet her every action showed that she could not decide whether her governess-companion were something as exciting as a shameless Delilah, or merely as contemptible as a common lightskirt.
• “Does Robin’s light of love remind you of her? Then it’s no wonder you’ve become so exercised about it. Is she such a pretty little creature then?”
• They had been riding without a stop for quite some time, and by now had exhausted all their expressions of ill-usage.
• Mrs. White’s house was a narrow gray townhouse which had once been in a fashionable section of town, but which now gathered its skirts nervously in from its iron railings as the surrounding neighborhood became decidedly more common.
• they recounted tales of the previous year’s extravaganzas when Napoleon had first been defeated. Then, they told her, there had been fireworks in all the parks, and public fairs, and balloon ascensions, and mechanical displays so marvelous and enthralling that they dreamed of them still.
• “By God!” he exclaimed at last in an undervoice. “Do you think me mad?” Since that was precisely the reaction she had least wished for him to have, Julia felt positively faint. When he saw her blanch, however, he looked as startled as she felt.
• “I understand that,” Julia replied steadily, “but I do not accept your apology. For it was not given to me, sir. It was, instead, given solely to yourself. You are deeply shamed,”... she went on with cold mockery, “you cannot believe it of yourself. You find such deeds repugnant to yourself. That is no apology to me. Forgive yourself, then, if you can, but I cannot.
• “But how can you even beg my pardon?” she asked, “when you do not know me? And what can that pardon be worth when you clearly hold me in such low esteem? I am only some insensate creature you have procured for your own purposes. If you could so readily deceive me, manipulate my future, and attempt to ruin my name, why should you stick at manhandling me? It is all of a piece,” she concluded bitterly. “I see no incongruity in your actions, my lord.”
• Devious fellows like the Marquess of Bessacarr or the Viscount North would do for deeds requiring stealth, but Lord Stafford had such charming, easy ways it was generally agreed that he clearly had more of
• For his stepfather, a thoughtful man, had taught him to understand that love, unlike money, was more enjoyable if it was earned and returned and not simply taken and spent.
• A shrewd bargainer might have let it appear to accuse him in all its blatancy. Still, in its concealment, the blemish became even more vivid to him. He had to think a moment before he silently congratulated her on her artful and correct decision that her attempt to ignore the incident would cause him to feel far worse about it than shrill or sullen accusation might. But this reasoning was too convoluted for even its author to follow for longer than the time it took for him to sip his demitasse.
• Julia could watch her employer-captor-nemesis unobserved. He was all three of these things,... she could not tell if he meant to offer her friendship, violence, or even ardor.
• we haven’t the sort of relationship that should give you either a moment’s pause as to her constancy or the slightest upper hand over me.”
• Now, he dared not even call her Julia in his private thoughts, if he were to keep his distance measured and his rage alive. But lord, the baron thought restlessly, with all he knew, still she had all the trappings of an ill-used innocent.
• he could make such a merry jest that one could forget that one had to dine with a long spoon when one supped with the devil.
• gave her an unexpected jolt of dismay. Worse, it made her remember how queer it had been to feel so completely enfolded and immersed in his regard even when all that he had done was simply to briefly touch her brow.
• “There’s simply too much bad ground we’d have to go over if we persist in going back to apologize. And we’ve gone too far to go back in actuality,
• he could see her form was both straight and curving, slender and full, ripe and boyish all at once in that splendidly contradictive way of well-turned womanflesh,
• His first mistress had left him a legacy of caution, which he knew of. But she had also robbed him of his vanity, a theft that he had never discovered and which ironically was perhaps her greatest parting gift to him.
• But fashion’s a peculiar art in that it always needs a fair accomplice. By itself it’s interesting, upon the wrong subject it’s appalling, but with a beautiful model to display it, it transcends mere function and becomes art. In that gown you make me wish I were an artist, Julia.”
• But I would have no difficulty, at least, in telling you no. Definitely no.” she continued as she rose from her seat without fuss and placed her napkin upon the table. “Absolutely no,” she said as she walked to the door. “Decidedly no,” she said as she curtsied low. “And positively no,” she said as she opened the door.
• “And,” he commented casually, “even if I did believe in your chastity, you forget that ignorance, like the bliss it is supposed to provide, is a very transitory state. It is a condition which can be corrected very simply, Julia.”
• “But not ‘Nick,’” he continued, as he put her hand on his sleeve and held it there lightly by covering it with his own. “It’s far too short. Now ‘Nicholas’ lasts an age, and takes up a good bit more of your time.”
• But he was so entertained by her notion of enlightened Norsemen that he went about for the remainder of the evening postulating about the courses that might be offered at the College of Eric the Red, until she was weak with laughter and lightheaded with happiness. And that, she now told herself sternly, would never do.
• It wasn’t that she feared that she would forget him, it was rather that she worried that she might not have enough to remember of him. She discovered she wanted something more of love to recall when she grew old than just the folly of one innocent, abortive evening when she was seventeen.
• So I hope you won’t mind the company of a fellow togged out with all the color and dash of the financial sheets, for I’m only all black and white to your silver and blond and blue. You look like a moonbeam, Julia.”
• I won’t be your mistress, Nicholas, because I am Julia Hastings, and she is not the sort of girl to become anyone’s mistress, even though she is the abandoned sort of female who will tell you straightaway that if she could be anyone’s, she would be yours.
• For he found himself in the odd position of pursuing a female for the usual purposes, only to discover that he eventually valued her so much as a person that her womanhood became almost an incidental gift.
• she had believed that Robin had broken her heart. But now she knew that he had not, he had only caused her to hide it away. It was his uncle who had unearthed it despite all her caution, and finding it still intact, it was he who would complete its destruction.
• You said that Julia was the impediment, so I attempted to remove her from your path by throwing her into your path. The poor lady almost got trampled by our mechanations.
• But that was what she was, she thought, straightening her shoulders and giving one last little mournful snuffle. And if she changed herself beyond recognition to achieve a desire, why then, she reasoned, she would be like one of Cinderella’s stepsisters, slicing off a toe or two to fit a slipper that was never meant to be worn by her.
• The jacket that he complained of was a trifle excessive in its cloth and cut, having a rich and shining silver thread prominent among the blue ones, and it fit his trim form as though it had been put on with an artist’s brush rather than a valet’s assistance.
• “Ah,” she said, and was all she could say. Because to refuse his money would be to declare her feelings for him, and to accept it was to accept the truth she had struggled against all night and all morning: that she had been in his employ, and that her only chance for a future with him would be to continue in his employ.
• but I promise I’ll continue to badger you—Lord,” he breathed in exasperation, “if I cannot even make a proposal to you without hectoring you again, how can I ever expect you to believe in my good intentions?”
• The sailors aboard the packet almost lost their difficult cargo overboard as they spied the elegant gentleman and the beautiful blond lady on the edge of the dock lost in a fervent embrace beneath their very eyes. The French seamen were enchanted and declared the couple their countrymen, on the basis of the gentleman’s garb and the lady’s evident cooperation. Some of the English hearties protested that while the lady might be French, the gentleman’s decisive, no-nonsense manner marked him as one of theirs, and wagers were being laid on the matter before the couple parted.
• For in a moment the spellbound sailors saw the expensively styled gentleman plummet backward into the murky waters. What they had not seen was the beautiful lady’s two white and dovelike hands straighten themselves against the gentleman’s broad chest and deliver him a capable push when he was off guard, strong enough to topple him over the brink.

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但凡是Chase的作品，总是喜剧的基调，不管开头多outre：女主逃婚，不幸被骗到妓院，遇到酒醉来耍的男主。男主把她送到他姐姐家，她在一个urchin帮助下跑到一家裁缝店工作，但后来接受他姐夫/远方亲戚帮助上婚姻市场。Devil‘s Delilah 里的Langdon 是这本里的炮灰。女主碰到男主常常教导主任附身，教他改过自新。两个别扭孩子拌嘴部分是全书最好看的部分。

• Oh, all right. I’ll chase you if you like.” He started to get up, changed his mind, and slumped back against the pillow in a half-recumbent position. “Only it’s such a bother.”
• Mrs. Grendle accepted the sum with much vivid description of her customer’s want of human feeling and diverse anatomical inadequacies.
• “There you are,” he announced as he deposited her in a chair. “Rescued.” “Yes,” Catherine answered a trifle breathlessly. “Thank you.”... “I’ve been flung about quite enough,” she added in a low voice, her narrow face mutinous. “Beg your pardon, ma’am—Miss Pettigrew, if I remember aright—but you picked an uncommon careless and impatient chap as your rescuer.
• He was amazed that, after taking one look at this stray, he had not stormed back to Granny Grendle to demand a more reasonable facsimile of a female.
• Finally,” she continued, as though she were helping him with a problem in geometry, “it is hardly in my best interests to wed a man I met in a house of ill repute, even if I had any notion how to force a man to marry me, which I assure you I have not.”
• “I’ve never had good colour.” “My conscience refuses to believe you. I do apologise, my dear, but mine is a very fierce conscience.
• “what do you recommend we do about her?” “Burn that dress,” he replied. “It frightened me out of my wits. And do something about her hair. That knot is a crime against nature.” “Then you believe we should take her in?” “Have to,” said his lordship as he opened his book. “Pelliston’s chit.”
• “If you persist in insulting my cousin, Max, I shall be forced to call you out, and that will be a great pity, as you are the better shot and Louisa has grown rather accustomed to me, I think.”
• valet stoically enquired. Lord Rand looked at his coat, then back at the neckcloth the valet held. “I suppose,” he said after a moment, “if we do meet up with the wretched girl, you think the combination will drive her off again.”
• Jemmy was a child wise in the ways of the world. He knew that tall, fancy-dressed gentlemen always got exactly their way in that world, and most especially when they were addressed as “My Lord.” He refused to be consoled.
• “Miz Kaffy is learnin’ me to write all ‘em hundred letters and now you come to take her away and we just got to ‘J’ and there’s a pile more arter. N’ who sez anyhow ‘afs all wot you say?” the boy demanded. “How does we know you don’t mean bad for her? She ain’t one of ‘em wicked ones, you know. Miz Kaffy’s a lady and knows all ‘em letters and eats wif her fork and all. N’ she tole you to go away besides,” the child summed up with his most unanswerable argument.
• She must have expected a perfectly horrendous homecoming if she’d elected to work for the miserable wages of a seamstress instead. The rage and frustration that had been building in him for days abruptly dissipated. She was gallant in her way, wasn’t she? He remembered the girl clutching a coverlet about her as she sought help from a wild, drunken vagabond. Brave then too.
• Why must he haunt my house?” “Apparently, sir, he’s spying on you.” “Oh, give me strength.” The viscount ran his fingers through his golden hair.
• “Is it? Kind of you to say so. Did your own glass tell you that you look like a spray of lilac?” If this was more teasing, Catherine was at a complete loss how to respond. Her face grew hot. “Here now,” Jemmy cut in. “Wot’s he about?” Haven’t the vaguest idea, Max answered inwardly. Aloud he said, “I was telling Miss Pelliston how lovely she is. Don’t you agree?” Jemmy gazed consideringly at his friend for a moment. Then he nodded. “Why’d you go all red, ‘en?” he asked her.
• She did miss a step when he told her she was in looks, but she reminded herself about intellectual development and managed a faint smile.
• “Yes,” he said, wondering why he felt as though he were in quicksand, “your eyes are lovely.” “That’s what you told me,” his disciple reminded patiently. “What must I answer?”
• He hauled his attention back to his plate. “Why, that they’re sharp enough to detect the wicked truths lurking behind honeyed words.” “That sounds rather like a scold.” “Not if you smile when you say it, and especially not if you contrive to blush at the same time. That will encourage the gentleman to declare his innocence.” Miss Pelliston sighed. “This is very complicated.” “Yes,” his lordship concurred, more heartily than she could know. “Very
• She wished she could find some safe island between prudery and impropriety—but the Beau Monde offered no solid moral ground. Hypocrisy seemed to be the fashionable equivalent of propriety, discretion indistinguishable from morality, and the rules seemed to constantly shift on whim.
• “We once spent four hours debating Herodotus’s explanation for the difference between the Persian and Egyptian skulls.”
• “We live, Miss Pelliston, in a corrupt, unjust, hypocritical world. In the circumstances, you’re justified in thinking murderous thoughts. If you didn’t, I’d have to suspect your powers of reason.”
• No gentleman has ever kissed me before—at least no one who wasn’t kin—and that was on the cheek. I think—I believe I’m... flattered. All the same, I am not fast,” she added. “Of course you’re not.” “Therefore I had rather you didn’t... flatter me again, My Lord.
• might accidentally go off... in his face. “Only if I am awake,” Lynnette answered, quite as calmly as if she too had known the privileges of public school education.
• the park’s green serenity, for this was the place in which Charles II’s Queen had commanded no flowers ever be planted. Here at least the straying husband could not pluck bouquets for his army of mistresses.
• You are very inconsistent. Sometimes you appear perfectly normal.” Max knew a dangerous wish to be enlightened. At which times, he wondered, did she consider him normal? Was it at all possible that at such times she found him pleasant company? But he didn’t want to be pleasant company to her!
• I’m sure he never noticed any of my frocks—any more than Papa ever did.” Lord Rand’s smile grew a tad more bleak. Perhaps it had occurred to him that he could, if asked, provide an accurate list of every garment he’d ever seen Miss Pelliston in, from the moment he’d seen her wrapped in a blanket.
• concluded ‘Mens sana in corpore sano,’ in the words of Juvenal... or as Mr. Locke so aptly put it, ‘A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.’
• Mr. Blackwood approved of turning inner wheels... By and large the aristocracy was intelligent enough. The problem was that its members had no need to live by their wits. Thus their wits atrophied. If they could not rely upon the sharper instincts and abundant common sense of their servants, the British upper classes would destroy themselves through sheer inertness.
• “Do you so much as breathe a hint of this scurrilous tale and I shall take it up and trumpet it abroad.” Max heard Browdie’s outraged gasp and smiled. She had called his bluff, the clever Cat. Browdie could not publicly condemn her then turn around and marry her after.
• “Yes, with a great pack of lies.” “ Truly, to tell lies is not honourable, but when the truth entails tremendous ruin, to speak dishonourably is pardonable.” “You need not quote me Sophocles, My Lord. Even the devil can quote scripture to his purpose.”
• (The Gordon:) Argoyne, I suppose, though Langdon wants the same thing, but I’ll see him turn to stone first, since he tells everyone I can do it,
• By the time the waltz was over and Max had relinquished his partner to Lord Argoyne, the viscount was beside himself. How dare she be so cool and proper when she made him so heated? How dare she giggle and act human for once and set off all those warm, cosy sensations and weaken his already beleaguered resistance even further?
• I like to look a girl right in the eye. Small women give me a crick in the neck. And a headache,” he added, tapping his chest, having apparently misplaced his skull.
• Catherine stared coldly at her captor. She hoped her heart was not pounding as loudly as she thought it was. “It is obvious what has happened,” she told him. “This is what comes of incessant gluttony and drunkenness. Your dissolute habits have led to mental decay. Don’t expect any pity from me. You have brought it all upon yourself.”
• “Oh, Max,” she cried. “I thought you’d never come.” Lord Rand must have forgotten who was supposed to be the hero in this scene, because he never looked at Mr. Langdon. He never looked at anybody. His arms closed around Miss Pelliston in a crushing embrace, and he buried his face in her hair.


• as the Bard had said, “Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”