Dalgliesh

“Leda was all wrapped up,” continued Mamie, appearing in the doorway with a large sack of meal and standing it up against the wall. “She was like a person with too many clothes on, you know. She couldn’t feel the warmth of the sun.” The sun poured down into the yard. The clean grey cobbles and the old, red-stone buildings reflected the warmth and seemed to bask happily in the golden rays. Lady Shaw felt them upon her back, warming, comforting, health-giving, so she understood. “Mamie,” she said. “I don’t know why you pretend to be stupid.” “I don’t pretend,” replied Mamie. “I was always the stupid one of the family—no good at lessons or anything. Caroline and Jean were clever, and Harriet was the cleverest of all. If you have three clever sisters you know exactly where you are. I used to be rather unhappy about it, but not now. Jock likes me as I am.” Lady Shaw had seated herself upon the edge of an old red-stone drinking-trough; she seemed in no hurry to go, and Mamie was never in a hurry. Mamie always had leisure for her friends. In most houses nowadays (thought Lady Shaw) there was a feeling of unease. Time marched on and everybody ran madly to keep up with it; even pleasure was taken at a gallop. Yet what pleasure was there that could”
― D.E. Stevenson, Music in the Hills

“like Truth, in the well of their own solitary tears. She was now proceeding to the house of her most dear and especial friend: an ancient lady, whose strong will swayed, and whose warm heart embraced all who came within their influence, and whose healthful and vigorous spirit was softened in a manner most rare and beautiful by those delicate perceptions and sympathies which form so important an element in the constitution of genius.”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“ONE FYTTE OF Lucilla’s history is here ended, and another is to be told. We have recorded her beginning in all the fulness of youthful confidence and undaunted trust in her own resources; and have done our best to show that in the course of organising society Miss Marjoribanks, like all other benefactors of their kind, had many sacrifices to make, and had to undergo the mortification of finding out that many of her most able efforts turned to other people’s profit and went directly against herself. She began the second period of her career with, to some certain extent, that sense of failure which is inevitable to every high intelligence after a little intercourse with the world. She had succeeded in a great many things, but yet she had not succeeded in all; and she had found out that the”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant

“Startled once for all out of the early calm, the serene untroubled youthful life which lies behind her in the past, Menie feels the change very hard and sore as she realises it; — from doing nought for her own comfort — from the loving sweet dependence upon others, to which her child’s heart has been accustomed — suddenly, without pause or preparation, to learn that all must depend upon herself, — to have the ghost of strife and discord, where such full harmony was wont to be, — to feel the two great loves of her nature — the loves which heretofore, in her own innocent and unsuspicious apprehension, have but strengthened and deepened each the other — set forth in antagonism, love against love, and her own heart the battle-ground. Shrinking and failing one moment, longing vainly to flee away — away anywhere into the utmost desolation, if only it were out of this conflict, — the next resolving, with such strong throbs and beatings of her heart, to take up her burden cordially, to be ever awake and alert, to subdue this giant difficulty with the force of her own strong love and ceaseless tenderness”
― Mrs. Oliphant, The Works of Margaret Oliphant