" No profit in tender thoughts of Mrs. Russell. If he were foolish enough to fall in love—and Lord knows he was foolish enough for most uses—his would be a solitary plunge. He would blink up at her, as from the bottom of a well into which only he had been careless enough to tumble, while she peered down at him with a disapproving face, because she liked a man to be dependable and he could not be relied upon even to watch where he set his feet. "

― Cecilia Grant , A Lady Awakened (Blackshear Family, #1)