Everybody knew gentlemen could be obtuse, especially when it came to matters of the heart. Everybody knew, as well, that gentlemen needed to believe they were in charge. Therefore, ladies had to learn ways of communicating the obvious without being obvious about it.

Surely she’d heard voices like his, so low-pitched as to make every commonplace utterance seem of the deepest intimacy, every cliche a delicious secret.

By and large the aristocracy was intelligent enough. The problem was that its members had no need to live by their wits. Thus their wits atrophied. If they could not rely upon the sharper instincts and abundant common sense of their servants, the British upper classes would destroy themselves through sheer inertness.

No good would come of trying to make something of a man with a brain like machinery.

Thanks to Mr. Grose’s Lexicon Balatronicum, Olympia knew a buffer nabber was a dog stealer.

Hypocrisy seemed to be the fashionable equivalent of propriety, discretion indistinguishable from morality, and the.

I don’t know who had the training of you,” he continued doggedly, “but your morals are shocking. You spent a night in my bed, remember, after a night in a bawdy house. You go about collecting street urchins and letting inebriated vagabonds kiss you, and then you get into brawls in pawnshops. You are probably past all redemption, but I’m going to reform you anyhow. If you behave yourself, perhaps I’ll let you reform me on occasion, but I make no promises.

I am not in love with you,” she said. “It is an infatuation. I have heard of such derangements happening to elderly spinsters.

At that moment she heard from the room beyond the terrifying noises by means of which primitive man once warned away the creatures skulking near his cave at night. She crept closer to the door and listened. It was true. Mr. Demowery was snoring.

I’m no good at being good.