“Not," Caroline had said, "that I disapprove of your moniker. It is simply that my husband's name is also Henry, and it's rather disconcerting for me to use it on a girl of your tender years."Henry had only smiled and told her that that was just fine. It had been so long since she had had a maternal figure that she would have been inclined to let Caroline call her Esmerelda if she so desired.”

“Between dainty bites, she told Amie, 'Oh, you simply are as darling a creature as Henry described! I had no idea of your being so grown up! Henry, she is positively frazzleging!' Amie deepened her smile, saying, 'And I had no idea you would be so pretty either, madam.”

“She wondered if she would have tumbled into love with him during the past week if her heart had been whole, if her soul had no been shattered long ago. She rather thought she might have. But a heart and soul could not be mended by the power of the will, she had discovered over seven years. And so she had accepted reality and moved on.”

“Matthew gave her such a hurt, wistful, nobly forbearing, and absolutely infuriating look that if Caroline had been a rich aunt she would have cut him out of her will on the spot.”

“What's yer name?" he demanded.The girl searched for a name. "Stella," she said at last, because she had the stars at her fingertips and she had been studying maps of the sky and she was someone else now, not the girl she had been in Ballarat where her grandfather had pointed out the planets and named them, and not the girl she had been in Melbourne, and she certainly didn't want to be the girl she was at her Brisbane school. She was reinventing herself."No it's not," the boy said. "You're new. Where're ya from?""I'm Stella," she said stubbornly. "I'm from the moon. You wanna look?”

“She had worked a year to get him out of her life as much as she possibly could. He always had a place in her heart since she had loved him so obsessively for such a long time, but she had been able to extract herself from him to an extent.”