She laughed because she must, and because he made her;
She had the cold, angry face that spelled trouble, the face that sent servants flying, stage managers running for their lives, and ourselves to whatever distant room we might possess.
She had changed into another mourning gown, cut somewhat fuller than the other, and instead of a hat she had wound her black lace shawl about her hair for covering. She was talking to Wellington, her...
She does not know what is good for her, any more than all the so-called patriots in the country. Someone should have the nerve, and the power, to say ‘Enough.’ But they’re like a lot of sheep without...
Sentiment can turn afterlife into a fairy tale for children, and I prefer this to Edmé’s theory of oblivion.
Resignation brings its own reward
Rebecca, always Rebecca. Wherever I walked in Manderley, wherever I sat, even in my thoughts and in my dreams, I met Rebecca. I knew her figure now, the long slim legs, the small and narrow feet. Her...
Perhaps losing my first child had made me hard. Nothing Robert could say or do would ever again surprise me. If he chose to leave us this way, although my heart yearned after him it was his choice, no...
People always gossiped about us, even as children. We created a strange sort of hostility wherever we went. In those days, during and after the First World War, when other children were well-mannered...
Packing up. The nagging worry of departure. When shutting drawers and flinging wide an hotel wardrobe, or the impersonal shelves of a furnished villa, I am aware of sadness, of a sense of loss. Here,...
Once more she knew the humility of being born a woman, when the breaking down of strength and spirit was taken as natural and unquestioned. Were she a man, now, she would receive rough treatment, or i...
Once a person gave his talent to the world, the world put a stamp upon it. The talent was not a personal possession any more. It was something to be traded, bought and sold. It fetched a high price, o...
Oh, I don’t know, he said carelessly. Put you in a fine gown and a pair of high-heeled shoes, and stick a comb in your hair, I daresay you’d pass for a lady even in a big place like Exeter. I’m meant...
No, Robert did not understand. Handsome, gay, debonair, perfectly self-possessed, he had yet not grasped the fact that his young sister, with her smattering of education and her provincial dress, belo...
Naturally, at the outbreak of the Revolution he followed the example of the clergy and the aristocracy and emigrated to England with his young bride, my mother, and suffered much penury in consequence...
My afternoon had spoilt me for the hours that still remained,
Marat, in L’Ami du Peuple, declared that the only way to save the Revolution for the people was to slaughter the aristocrats en masse; yet if this happened the innocent might suffer with the guilty. S...
Listen, my sweet. When you were a little girl, were you ever forbidden to read certain books, and did your father put those books under lock and key? Yes, I said. Well, then. A husband is not so very...
Jim was no more interested than Mrs. Trigg had been. It was, Nat thought, like air raids in the war. No one down this end of the country knew what the Plymouth folk had seen and suffered. You had to e...
Jamaica Inn stands today, hospitable and kindly, a temperance house on the twenty-mile road between Bodmin and Launceston. In the following story of adventure I have pictured it as it might have been...