People argue themselves out of their pleasures

The glitter of the great world, you know, is only so much froth and spume: you may look in vain for happiness there.

Anne’s is a world very like this one, and you can move about in it with familiarity - but not freedom: it is a place of rigorous consequence, where the weak have to give way to the strong, where her governess heroine Agnes must walk as best she can in the cold shade of money and masculinity.

It is painful to see someone suffering what you must be suffering- watching someone you love be so cruelly hurt.

You cannot believe everything you hear

One hesitates to open a new chapter when the old one is not resolved.