[…] because she felt a strange freedom—even a security—in having decided that no acquaintanceship could end in anything untoward, she felt emboldened to sometimes do and say such things to men […]

I had lost him. He might have been speaking Ursprache, for all that I understood.

Nanny Broome was looking up at the outer wall. Just under the ceiling there were three lunette windows, heavily barred and blacked out in the normal way by centuries of grime. Their bases were on a level with the pavement outside, a narrow way which was several feet lower than the road behind the house.

By the time the blue dress was tried on, Madame Cie had, with the aid of a few pins, plaits, and a bow of blue ribbon, transformed the half-lace shawl into one of the smartest and distingué things imaginable; but when the bill came in at Christmas, for that five minutes' labor and distingué touch, she charged one pound eight.