The Princess Casamassima (Volume 1 of 2)

The simplest account of the origin of _The Princess Casamassima_ is, I think, that this fiction proceeded quite directly, during the first year of a long residence in London, fr...

I have, for example, a weakness of sympathy with that constant effort of George Eliot’s which plays through Adam Bede and Felix Holt and Tito Melema, through Daniel Deronda and...

Mrs. Bowerbank, in a leisurely, roundabout way, wandered off to her sister, Mrs. Chipperfield, whom she had come into that part of the world to see, and the whole history of the...

Miss Pynsent, when she found herself alone, felt she was really quite upside down; for this lurid crisis had never entered into her calculations: the very nature of the case had...

Mr. Vetch paused a minute, but apparently not out of deference to this amiable interruption. He went on suddenly with a ring of feeling in his voice. “Let him know, because it w...

“Is there nothing the little gentleman would like to say, now, to the unfortunate? Hasn’t he any pleasant remark to make to her about his coming so far to see her when she’s so...

Millicent smiled as if she knew how people often considered things, and remarked that very likely it was tidy comfortable work, but she couldn’t believe there was much to be see...

She enlightened him but little on this point, though she talked a great deal on a variety of subjects and mentioned to him her habits, her aspirations, her likes and dislikes—wh...

The acquaintance, none the less, was sealed three months later by a supper, one Sunday night, in Lisson Grove, to which Mr. Vetch brought his fiddle, at which Amanda presented t...

He evidently meant this to be encouraging to Hyacinth, whose quick desire to avert M. Poupin’s allusions had not been lost on him; but our hero could see that he himself would b...

This challenge was hardly less alarming than the other, for he was far from being ready with an impressive formula. He replied, however, with a candour in which he tried as far...

She jerked herself up and for a moment he thought she would jump out of her bed at him. “A better place than this? Pray how could there be a better place? Every one thinks it’s...

It may easily be believed that he criticised his inclination even while he gave himself up to it, and that he often wondered he should find so much to attract in a girl in whom...

He had no money to pay for places at a theatre in the Strand, Millicent Henning having made it clear to him that on this occasion she expected something better than the pit. “Sh...

“Laws, I hope _she_ ain’t one of the aristocracy!” Millicent exclaimed with apparent irrelevance; and following the direction of her eyes Hyacinth saw that the chair his mysteri...

His first consciousness after his companion had opened it was of his proximity to the stage, on which the curtain had now again risen. The play was in progress, the actors’ voic...

She answered his eager declaration with a serious smile and a melancholy head-shake. “I’ve no such pretensions and my good old friend’s laughing at me. Of course that’s very eas...

Hyacinth had been intending for some time to take Pinnie to call on the prostrate damsel in Audley Court, to whom he had promised that his benefactress (he had told Rose Munimen...

She looked away into the thickening dusk, at the smutty housetops, the blurred emanation of lamp-light above the streets. “I don’t know. One has one’s ideas. Some of them may be...

The Captain looked at him so silently and so fixedly, through the fumes of their tobacco, after he had made this last charge that Hyacinth thought he was perhaps offended; but t...

“Well, I daresay you expect great things when you come into a house like this. You must tell me if I upset you. I’m very old-fashioned and I’m not of this country. I speak as on...

“Don’t be _banal_, please. That’s what other people are. What’s the use of my looking for something fresh in other walks of life if you’re going to be _banal_ too? I ask if you’...

“She said you had charming manners,” Miss Pynsent hastened to remark; “but on my life, Hyacinth Robinson, I never mentioned a scrap that it could give you pain that any one shou...

“Ah, because I’ve not been at the ‘Sun and Moon’? Well, I’ve been constantly out of town, you know. And then—don’t you see what I mean?—I want to be tremendously careful. That’s...

They came oftener this second winter, for the season was terribly hard; and as in that lower world one walked with one’s ear nearer the ground the deep perpetual groan of London...

“Well, I want you all to know what strikes me before we part company. There isn’t a man in the blessed lot of you that isn’t afraid of his bloody skin—afraid, afraid, afraid! I’...