“That was his mother. When she wasn't crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself.”

“She asked for soup, and I served her cereal. Our love was in the breakfast stage.”

“She didn't want to think about how wrong this was or how foolish it was to give herself to a known seducer. Because tonight Oliver wasn't that man. Not to her. He was the boy who'd cried over his dead mother, the young man who'd lost himself in drink and women to forget the past, the marquess who'd vowed not to marry for money. He was the man to be her lover.”

“I wish everyone would stop crying, Tom. Uncle Joe would be so angry about it." But she's crying herself now. "He'd be so angry at us, Tom, for crying so much when all he did was laugh.”

“She had no reason to kill herself,"I say finally. "She just wasn't able to fly.”

“She laughed at herself when she saw that she had expected to be at once a heretic and a returned hero; she was very reasonable and merry about it; and it hurt just as much as ever.”