His own closed over it firmly.
"Will you," he said--"I came here, in fact, to ask you if you will come and live with me ?" Her heart stood still, quite still.

London was so full of ugly stories about things done by men of his rank--stories of transgressions, of follies, of cruelties.

So many were open secrets.

There were men, who, even while keeping up an outward aspect of respectability, were held accountable for painful things.

The lives of well-born struggling women were so hard.