I have observed that when young men obtain this mental confirmation of their suspicions, they wax less reluctant to act as brutes than when the doubt restrained them.
He reasoned thus: "I can bring my mind to the idea of losing her, if it must be so." (Hear, hear! from the unanimous internal Parliament.) "But I can't make her miserable (cheers)--I can't go and break her heart" (loud cheers, drowning a faint dissentient hum) .-- The scene, of which Tracy had told him, gave Wilfrid a kind of dread of the girl.

If that was her state of feeling upon a distant subject, how would it be when he applied the knife.

Simply, impossible to use the knife at all! Wield it thou, O Circumstance, babe-munching Chronos, whosoever thou art, that jarrest our poor human music effectually from hour to hour! Colonel Pierson paid his promised visit, on his way back to his quarters at Verona.

His stay was shortened by rumours of anticipated troubles in Italy.

One day at table he chanced to observe, speaking of the Milanese, that they required another lesson, and that it would save the shedding of blood if, annually, the chief men of the city took a flogging for the community (senseless arrogance that sensible, and even kindly, men will sometimes be tempted to utter, and prompted to act on, in that deteriorating state of a perpetual repressive force) .-- Emilia looked at him till she caught his eye: "I hope I shall never meet you there," she said.
The colonel coloured, and drew his finger along each curve of his moustache.