“He could almost feel her spirit leaving him,see her runing gracefully across the stepping-stones made of stars into the land of the dead”

“Beckett stepped from behind the curtain so he could see Eve’s face clearly. He knew she was beautiful, but the smile on her face for this little girl made him grab the windowsill.”

“He'd become so accustomed to having her there, right there next to him, that he found he could no longer go the day without needing to see her. Even the space of a few hours made him feel restless and dissatisfied.”

“He almost said to himself that he did not like her, before their conversation ended; he tried so hard to compensate himself for the mortified feeling, that while he looked upon her with an admiration he could not repress, she looked at him with proud indifference, taking him, he thought, for what, in his irritation, he told himself - was a great fellow, with not a grace or a refinement about him.”

“He was, she realised, quite graceful. The very idea surprised her. Male grace was a quality she'd never thought of beyond the ballroom; either a man could dance a quadrille with skill and without stepping on her feet or he could not. But here was another kind of grace altogether--and untrained grace, an instinctive animal grace.”

“Neither loss of father, nor loss of mother, dear as she was to Mr Thornton, could have poisoned the remembrance of the weeks, the days, the hours, when a walk of two miles, every step of which was pleasant, as it brought him nearer and nearer to her, took him to her sweet presence - every step of which was rich, as each recurring moment that bore him away from her made him recal some fresh grace in her demeanour, or pleasant pungency in her character.”