“However,he also found himself constantly stalked by marriage-minded mamas and their braying daughters, and, frankly, while he'd thought it rather amusing in a twisted way when he'd been poor and knew they were getting no bargain, Daniel now found it vastly annoying. He was more than a stallion for stud with a bag of gold between his legs. And as entertaining as Suzette was, he didn't appreciate her interest in him being based only on his wealth. So he did what any reasonable man would do in this situation...he lied."I am as poor as a church mouse," he announced with feigned regret. "In fact, poorer than a church mouse since just this last year I inherited Woodrow from my uncle and it is a terrible mess in need of a great deal of repair and care that I cannot afford.”

“he'd once believed that the answer lay somehow in themusic he created, he suspected now that He'd been mistaken. The more he thought about it, the more he'd come to realize that for him, music had always been a movement away from reality rather than a means of living in it more deeply. .. he now knew that burying himself in music had less to do with God than a selfish desire to escape.”

“He'd thought he would stop looking for her. He was a practical man, and he'd assumed that eventually he would simply give up. And in some ways, he had. After a few months he found himself back in the habit of turning down more invitations than he accepted. A few months after that, he realized that he was once again able to meet women and not automatically compare them to her.But he couldn't stop himself from watching for her. He might not feel the same urgency, but whenever he attended a ball or took a seat at a musicale, he found his eyes sweeping across the crowd, his ears straining for the lilt of her laughter.She was out there somewhere. He'd long since resigned himself to the fact that he wasn't likely to find her, and he hadn't searched actively for over a year, but...He smiled wistfully. He just couldn't stop from looking. It had become, in a very strange way, a part of who he was. His name was Benedict Bridgerton, he had seven brothers and sisters, was rather skilled with both a sword and a sketching crayon, and he always kept his eyes open for the one woman who had touched his soul.”

“Now he knew that any memories he might cherish during the last years of his life would be only fictions from a biography he'd never lived.”

“I wondered what he'd done that had been so terrible that he wouldn't accept even an ounce of kindness from another person. It seemed impossible just then that I could ever hate him more than he hated himself.”

“I knew by the way he looked at her that he held her in a higher regard than he held even himself. No selfishness or insecurity kept him from seeing the full extent of her goodeness, as it so often does with the rest of us. That kind of love may only be possible in Abnegation. I do not know.My father: Erudite-born, Abnegation-grown. He often found it difficult to live up to the demands of his chosen faction, just as I did. But he tried, and he knew true selflessness when he saw it.”