A portrait by a master hand might hand him down to generations as an ancestor to be proud of.

But with passion and with courage, and a bent for snatching at the lion's own, does he not look foredoomed to an early close?
Her imagination called up a portrait of Elizabeth's Earl of Essex to set beside him; and without thinking that the two were fraternally alike, she sent him riding away with the face of the Earl of Essex and the shadow of the unhappy nobleman's grievous fortunes over his head.
But it is inexcuseable to let the mind be occupied recurrently by a man who has not moved the feelings, wicked though it be to have the feelings moved by him.

Aminta rebuked her silly wits, and proceeded to speculate from an altitude, seeing the man's projects in a singularly definite minuteness, as if the crisis he invoked, the perils he braved, the mute participation he implored of her for the short space until their fate should be decided, were a story sharply cut on metal.

Several times she surprised herself in an interesting pursuit of the story; abominably cold, abominably interested.

She fell upon a review of small duties of the day, to get relief; and among them a device for spiriting away her aunt from the table where Mrs.Lawrence wished to meet Lord Ormont.
It sprang up to her call like an imp of the burning pit.