Mary Elizabeth Braddon

"And has your marriage brought you happiness, Marian?" "I love my husband," she answered with a plaintive reproachful look, as if there had been a kind of cruelty in his straight question. "I do not suppose that there is such a thing as …

I have waited for your return these many years. You might have found me more tenderly disposed towards you, had you come earlier; but there are some feelings which seem to wear out as a man grows older,—affections that grow paler day by …

He was a very gracious and communicative person, and seemed to take life in an easy agreeable manner, like a man whose habit it was to look on the brighter side of all things, provided his own comfort was secured.

"Naught's had, all's spent, when our desire is got without content." I wonder whether the fulfilment of one's heart's desire ever does bring perfect contentment? I think not. There is always something wanting. And if a man comes by his …

You can make no excuse for his love, that fatal irresistible passion, which outweighs truth and honour when they are set in the opposite scale.

A woman's love is such a capricious thing, and so often bestowed upon the least deserving amongst those who seek it.

I consider any man a fool who allows himself to be captivated by a pretty face.

And now the senna and camomile were to flavour all her life. She was no longer to enjoy that mystical double existence, those delicious glimpses of dreamland, which made up for all the dulness of the common world that surrounded her.

Ruins and copious refreshment ware associated in Mr. Gilbert’s mind; and, indeed, there does seem to be a natural union between ivied walls and lobster-salad, crumbling turrets and cold chicken; just as the domes of Greenwich Hospital, the …

Who has not been, or is not to be mad in some lonely hour of life? Who is quite safe from the trembling of the balance?

He went in search of that honored kinsman with God knows how heavy a weight of anguish at his heart, for he knew he was about to shatter the day-dream of his uncle's life; and he knew that our dreams are none the less terrible to lose, …

He forgot that love, which is a madness, and a scourge, and a fever, and a delusion, and a snare, is also a mystery, and very imperfectly understood by everyone except the individual sufferer who writhes under its tortures.

Now love is so very subtle an essence, such an indefinable metaphysical marvel, that its due force, though very cruelly felt by the sufferer himself, is never clearly understood by those who look on at its torments and wonder why he takes …

Do you think I will suffer myself to be baffled?

We are apt to be angry with this cruel hardness in our life—this unflinching regularity in the smaller wheels and meaner mechanism of the human machine, which knows no stoppage or cessation, though the mainspring be forever hollow, and the …

He was a square, pale-faced man of almost forty, and had the appearance of having outlived every emotion to which humanity is subject.

"Justice to the dead first," he said; "mercy to the living afterward."

"You seem to have quite a taste for discussing these horrible subjects," she said, rather scornfully; "you ought to have been a detective police officer."

The wind came whistling up across the frosty open country, and through the leafless woods, and rattled fiercely at the window-frames.

Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-constrained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no color from the outer world.

Seated in the embrasure of this window, my lady was separated from Robert Audley by the whole length of the room, and the young man could only catch an occasional glimpse of her fair face, surrounded by its bright aureole of hazy, golden …

"Why, I can't help smiling at people, and speaking prettily to them. I know I'm no better than the rest of the world; but I can't help it if I'm pleasanter. It's constitutional."

As he sat in the deep embrasure of a mullioned window, talking to my lady, his mind wandered away to shady Figtree Court, and he thought of poor George Talboys smoking his solitary cigar in the room with the birds and canaries.

The widower only sighed and puffed his cigar fiercely out of the open window. Perhaps he was thinking of that far-away time—little better than five years ago, in fact; but such an age gone by to him—when he first met the woman for whom he …