Sublime

Comments on Verena, as the County drove home, were entirely favourable. ‘A very sensible girl,’ said Ann Rothley and her husband grunted assent, but said he was surprised that Quin, who’d had such beautiful girlfriends, was willing to marry somebody who, when all was said and done, looked like a Roman senator. His wife disagreed. ‘She has great pre

Same height, same hair colour. She could almost pass for Deborah from behind. But as the woman turned, he could tell she was no more than a cheap imitation. Her leggings were riding up between her butt cheeks, and she was wearing a short puffy jacket and spiky heels, further going to prove she was no Debbie. His Debbie wouldn’t be seen out looking

said—your father might be tempted to marry her; which would not have been a wise thing in him; for though the young lady might have been very beautiful, and good-hearted, yet no one on this side the water certainly knew her history;

Oh, why couldn’t Quin marry, she thought, making her way across the courtyard. Not one of those girls he brought up sometimes: actresses or Parisiennes who came down to breakfast shivering in fur coats and asked about central heating, but a girl of his own kind, a girl with breeding.

Names ending in an “a,” often with a foreign derivation, had become popular in England; “Julia” and “Louisa,” which Jane Austen herself uses as character names, both first came into use there in the eighteenth century and were still not very common.

There was a porter in blue, but the real keeper of the gate was a dragon called Véra. Indeed, it was a place of women—like a convent vowed to silence (as is usual in Spain)—but any women who were not models or seamstresses were dragons.