"Why, I can't help smiling at people, and speaking prettily to them. I know I'm no better than the rest of… — Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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.

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.

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