" . . . slander, Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath, Rides on the posting winds and doth belie All corners of the world."
Grace Stepney's mind was like a kind of moral fly-paper, to which the buzzing items of gossip were drawn by a fatal attraction, and where they hung fast in the toils of an inexorable memory.
The worst class of sum worked in the every-day world is cyphered by the diseased arithmeticians who are always in the rule of Subtraction as to the merits and successes of others, and never in Addition as to their own.
There was a lady at Santarem--but my lips are sealed. It is the part of a gallant man to say nothing, though he may indicate that he could say a great deal.
