April's Lady: A Novel

Must we part? or may I linger? Wax the shadows, wanes the day. Then, with voice of sweetest singer, That hath all but died away, Go, she said, but tightened finger Said articulately, Stay!
Philosophy triumphs easily over past and over future evils, but present evils triumph over philosophy.
A letter from my father, says Mr. Monkton, flinging the letter in question across the breakfast-table to his wife.
A letter from Sir George! Her dark, pretty face flushes crimson.
And such a letter after eight years of obstinate silence. There! read it, says her husband, contemptuously. The contempt is all for the writer of the letter.
Mrs. Monkton taking it up, with a most honest curiosity, that might almost be termed anxiety, reads it through, and in turn flings it from her as though it had been a scorpion.
Never mind, Jack! says she with a great assumption of indifference that does not hide from her husband the fact that her eyes are full of tears. Butter that bit of toast for me before it is quite cold, and give Joyce some ham. Ham, darling? or an egg? to Joyce, with a forced smile that makes her charming face quite sad.
Have you two been married eight whole years? asks Joyce laying her elbows on the table, and staring at her sister with an astonished gaze. It seems like yesterday! What a swindler old Time is. To look at Barbara, one would not believe she could have been born eight years ago.
Nonsense! says Mrs. Monkton laughing, and looking as pleased as married women—even the happiest—always do, when they are told they look un married. Why Tommy is seven years old.
Oh! That's nothing! says Joyce airily, turning her dark eyes, that are lovelier, if possible, than her sister's, upon the sturdy child who is sitting at his father's right hand. Tommy, we all know, is much older than his mother. Much more advanced; more learned in the wisdom of this world; aren't you, Tommy?
But Tommy, at this present moment, is deaf to the charms of conversation, his young mind being nobly bent on proving to his sister (a priceless treasure of six) that the salt-cellar planted between them belongs not to her, but to him! This sounds reasonable, but the difficulty lies in making Mabel believe it. There comes the pause eloquent at last, and then, I regret to say, the free fight!