My love is great, but it is not slavish or silly.

Do you think, sir, that I doubted for one moment Walter Clifford would own me when he came home and heard what I had suffered?
Did I think him so unworthy of my love as to leave me under that stigma?
Hardly.

Then why should I blacken Mrs.Walter Clifford for an afternoon, just to be unblackened at night ?" "This is good sense," said the Colonel, "and the thing is a mystery.

Can you solve it ?" "You may be sure I can--and woe is me--I must." She hung her head, and her hands worked convulsively.
"Sir," said she, after a pause, "suppose I could not tell the truth to all those people without subjecting the man I loved--and I love him now dearer than ever--to a terrible punishment for a mere folly done years ago, which now has become something much worse than folly--but how?
Through his unhappy love for me!" "These are dark words," said the Colonel.

"How am I to understand them ?" "Dark as they are," said Grace, "do they not explain my conduct in that bitter trial better than Julia Clifford's guesses do, better than anything that has occurred since ?" "Mrs.Walter Clifford," said the Colonel, with a certain awe, "I see there is something very grave here, and that it affects my son.