Ah! if only this perfect love of which she had read so much would come to him and her, life might perhaps grow worth the living.
It is a curious thing, but in such matters most men never learn wisdom from experience.

A man of John Niel's age might have guessed that it is dangerous work playing with explosives, and that the quietest, most harmless-looking substances are sometimes the most explosive.

He might have known that to set to work to cultivate the society of a woman with such tell-tale eyes as Jess's was to run the risk of catching the fire from them himself, to say nothing of setting her alight: he might have known that to bring all the weight of his cultivated mind to bear on her mind, to take the deepest interest in her studies, to implore her to let him see the poetry Bessie told him she wrote, but which she would show to no living soul, and to evince the most evident delight in her singing, were one and all hazardous things to do.

Yet he did them and thought no harm.
As for Bessie, she was delighted that her sister should have found anybody to whom she cared to talk or who could understand her.

It never occurred to her that Jess might fall in love.