So she was on her own, Kate thought, and instilled all the friendly helpfulness she could into her next question. “Excuse me, but are you the bad company young Mr. Scott has got into?

And the English army, wheeling, started south at a gallop over the hill pass into Ettrick, followed by twenty men and eight hundred sheep in steel helmets.

Versatility is one of the few human traits which are universally intolerable. You may be good at Greek and good at painting and be popular. You may be good at Greek and good at sport, and be wildly popular. But try all three and you’re a mountebank. Nothing arouses suspicion quicker than genuine, all-round proficiency.

And at thirty-eight a brilliant exponent of arms and a knight of the great fighting and religious Order of St John, the Chevalier de Villegagnon had absolutely no use for common sense himself, but respected it in the laity.

But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands.

Verily, God hath eighteen thousand worlds; and verily, your world is one of them, and this its bright axle-tree.

It seems to me,’ said Philippa prosaically, ‘that on the whole we run more risks with Mr Crawford’s protection than without it.