The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

by Anne Brontë

But the gleam of a bright red fire through the parlour window had more effect in cheering my spirits, and rebuking my thankless repinings, than all the sage reflections and good resolutions I had forced my mind to frame;—for

‘Thank you, Mr. Markham,’ said she, as I presented it to her. ‘I would have picked it up myself; only I did not want to disturb the cat.’

You would have us encourage our sons to prove all things by their own experience, while our daughters must not even profit by the experience of others.

shudder still at the remembrance of his voice—drone, drone, drone, in my ear—while he sat beside me, prosing away by the half-hour together, and beguiling himself with the notion that he was improving my mind by useful information, or impressing his dogmas upon me and reforming my errors of judgment, or perhaps that he was talking down to my level, and amusing me with entertaining discourse.

Sullen silence was taken for rapt attention, and gave him greater room to talk; sharp answers were received as smart sallies of girlish vivacity, that only required an indulgent rebuke; and flat contradictions were but as oil to the flames, calling forth new strains of argument to support his dogmas, and bringing down upon me endless floods of reasoning to overwhelm me with conviction.

went, but hearing him mutter something as I was closing the door, I turned again. It sounded very like ‘confounded slut,’ but I was quite willing it should be something else.

How odd it is that we so often weep for each other’s distresses, when we shed not a tear for our own!

‘What then, Rachel? Have you been reading novels?’

‘This rose is not so fragrant as a summer flower, but it has stood through hardships none of them could bear: the cold rain of winter has sufficed to nourish it, and its faint sun to warm it; the bleak winds have not blanched it, or broken its stem, and the keen frost has not blighted it. Look, Gilbert, it is still fresh and blooming as a flower can be, with the cold snow even now on its petals.—Will you have it?’