A male genius, a male ruffian, or even a male lunatic, would not have behaved exactly as she did behave.

There is a softness in masculine nature, even the most brutal, which acts as a check.
While the girl slept those two, the woman of forty, an age in itself terrible, and that hopeless young "wrong 'un" of twenty-three (also well connected I believe) had some sort of subdued row in the cleared rooms: wardrobes open, drawers half pulled out and empty, trunks locked and strapped, furniture in idle disarray, and not so much as a single scrap of paper left behind on the tables.

The maid, whom the governess and the pupil shared between them, after finishing with Flora, came to the door as usual, but was not admitted.

She heard the two voices in dispute before she knocked, and then being sent away retreated at once--the only person in the house convinced at that time that there was "something up." Dark and, so to speak, inscrutable spaces being met with in life there must be such places in any statement dealing with life.

In what I am telling you of now--an episode of one of my humdrum holidays in the green country, recalled quite naturally after all the years by our meeting a man who has been a blue-water sailor--this evening confabulation is a dark, inscrutable spot.