"Secretive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very true, sir," he agreed cordially, "and I am much obliged to you for taking that very proper view of the case. I pointed that out to my friend, but he is not a very reasonable man. He is very secretive and ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... was inclined to attribute to correct political principles, overlooking the moral delinquencies of other Democratic neighbors. But the old man, through long years of experience with human nature in California, had grown extremely cautious and secretive. Probably no one would ever have been the wiser in regard to his old sweetheart and her sad history except for the escape of Cummins' murderers. And now it was not necessary that any man other than ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... cooler moment, I hasten to blab the whole simplicity of it, to blab on Roscoe and the other navigators and the rest of the priesthood, all for fear that I may become even as they, secretive, immodest, and inflated with self-esteem. And I want to say this now: any young fellow with ordinary gray matter, ordinary education, and with the slightest trace of the student-mind, can get the books, and charts, and instruments ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... seaweed, is seized. It may contain a gem worth a king's ransom, or but an animal which, though it may be crossed in love, is not engaging in appearance or in any feature or quality commendable. There is the chance; and it appeals to most rational men. Secretive Fortune lures on, promising the bubble pearl 'and proffering that which satisfieth not, until the stress and perils of the avocation tell on the enthusiast, who finds himself not exuberant as wont; that Fortune has been tricking him; that in the pursuit of pearls ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... her work, and her eager interest in this little knot of people whose lives she had shaped was more possessive than ever. Hurd, indeed, was often silent and secretive; but she put down her difficulties with him to our odious system of class differences, against which in her own way she was struggling. One thing delighted her—that he seemed to take more and more interest in the labour questions she ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Ig!" Little O'Grady had cried upon learning of all this, "why won't you be fair and above-board? Why will you be so secretive, so self-sufficient? Why didn't you tell me it was Roscoe Orlando Gibbons who ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... shocked. Such a word. Tampering. He had the greatest possible esteem for Mrs. Fisher, but he did at times find her a little difficult. She liked him, he was sure, and she was in a fair way, he felt, to become a client, but he feared she would be a headstrong and secretive client. She was certainly secretive, for though he had been skilful and sympathetic for a whole week, she had as yet given him no inkling of what ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... however—either he hadn't looked at the address, or he had been impatient to see if there were any message for himself, and so on; but Beth was not mollified although she said nothing, and her annoyance made her secretive. She would watch for the postman, and take the letters from him herself, and conceal her own, so that Dan might not even know ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... wildest dreams of hurricane and prairie than the fact that, upstairs, alone in her room, she rose early in the morning or sat up late at night to... work at mathematics. No force on earth would have made her confess that. Her actions when thus engaged were furtive and secretive, like those of some nocturnal animal. Steps had only to sound on the staircase, and she slipped her paper between the leaves of a great Greek dictionary which she had purloined from her father's room for this ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... though his buckskin coat and breeches were worn and even frayed in spots, he had an air of some distinction and of concentrated force. It was a face that men turned to look at twice and shook their heads in doubt afterwards—a handsome, worn, secretive face, in as perfect control as the strings of an instrument under the bow of a great artist. It was the face of a man without purpose in life beyond the moment—watchful, careful, remorselessly determined, an adventurer's asset, the dial-plate ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... restraint, even in moments of the most tense excitement, cowed the Cuban. Never had he been able to penetrate into his fellow-conspirator's thoughts. But that Cecil should have talked loosely of so vital, so terrible a secret? No. The grave itself was not more secretive than that quiet schemer, of whom nothing ever seemed to be known. And to a negro boy! No, a thousand ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... she said. "No such idea ever occurred to me. Secretive I thought Susan might be, but immoral, never. I must forget you ever thought that. Let's talk about something less painful. Perhaps you would like to tell me more ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... and pallid baldness of the one and the sturdiness and gallant bearing of the other; considering, from the standpoint of her own personal knowledge in the premises, the Notary's disposition toward a secretive reticence that bordered upon severity, in contrast with the cordially frank and debonair temperament of the Major; and, at the back of all, keeping well in mind the fundamental truths that opportunity ever is evanescent and that time ever is on ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... There is that double possibility. But I am inclined to think neither. Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting. Why should she hand it over to anyone else? She could trust her own guardianship, but she could not tell what indirect or political influence might be brought to bear upon a business man. Besides, remember that she had resolved to use it within ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... merciless and rapid fire of questions. She would have made an excellent cross-examiner for the prosecution; Mr. Heatherbloom did not seem to enjoy the grilling. A number of queries he answered frankly; others he evaded. He seemed—ominous circumstance!—especially secretive regarding certain details of his past. He did not care to say where he was born, or who his parents were. What had he done? What occupations ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... that somewhat cryptical remark, and presently he left her and went to his room. Mary V felt that she was not being trusted by a person who surely ought to know by this time that he needn't be so secretive about his thoughts and intentions. If she had not proved her loyalty and her friendship by this time, what did a person want her to do, for ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... power of self-fertilization, but that they produce fertile seed only when pollen from another plant is carried to them. Yet how difficult they make dining for their benefactors! The bumblebee, which can reach the nectar, but not lap it conveniently, often "gets square" with the secretive blossom by nipping holes through its spur, to which the hive bees and others hasten for refreshment. We frequently find these punctured flowers. But hive and other bees visiting the blossom for pollen, some rubs off against their breast when they depress the two middle petals, a sort ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... veracity he became more strongly a partisan of the pro- slavery cause on that account. Longfellow frankly admitted that he did not understand Hawthorne, and he did not believe that anyone at Bowdoin College understood him. He was the most secretive man that he ever knew; but so far as genius was concerned, he believed that Hawthorne would outlive every other writer of his time. He had the ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... "Sociable, scheming, secretive; poor judge of men; lacking seriously in executive ability; decidedly a 'one-man-job' man; does not plan ahead; clannish, narrow-minded; very low intelligence for a foreman. Any organization he builds will be close-mouthed, unreliable, and ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... glorious love-match? He knew that woman, ever the mysterious sex, was capable any time of unguessed mystery. Did her frank comradeliness with Grandison token merely frank comradeliness and childhood contacts continued and recrudesced into adult years? or did it hide, in woman's subtler and more secretive ways, a beat of heart and return of feeling that might even out- balance what ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... we got to this war the farther away from us it seemed to be. We began to regard it as an elusive, silent, secretive, hide-and-go-seek war, which would evade us always. We resolved to pursue it into the country to the northward, from whence the Germans were reported to be advancing, crushing back the outnumbered Belgians as they came onward; but when we ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... that he has discovered "special and specific efficacy in the use of this combination of the caloric rays of the sun and the electric blue light in stimulating the glands of the body, the nervous system generally, and the secretive organs of man and animals." He also states that he finds that vegetation is vastly improved by the transmitted blue light. These alleged re-discoveries—for the General only claims to have devised the method of utilizing ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... "We're somewhat secretive—yes, sir," Tom replied. "That is only because we regard the method we are going to use as being mainly the concern of the A., G. & N. M. No offense meant, ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... what was in store for her, and all—sometimes scorched Nancy Nelson's mind like a devouring flame. She kept a deal of it to herself; it was making her a morose, secretive girl, instead of the open-hearted, frank character she was meant to be. Nancy's future as a girl and ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... promptly. "I'm never secretive against you, Anstey, old man and the only reason I don't talk at once is that I don't know just what I want to say. But remember—-8.15. By that time I think I shall have solved myself into a highly talkative ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... into the head of the god. A thick-skinned criminal inserted a small tack where it would do the least harm—in the hoof. An honest, or an egotistic penitent drove his nail in where it stands out prominently; while the secretive devotee placed his among a mass of others of long standing ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... Mrs. Gilbert with meticulous carelessness, "Gloria never makes me her confidante. She's very secretive. Between you and me"—she bent forward cautiously, obviously determined that only Heaven and her nephew should share her confession—"between you and me, I'd like to ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... swamp, was a heathen hoyden of twelve wayward, untrained years. Slight, straight, strong, full-blooded, she had dreamed her life away in wilful wandering through her dark and sombre kingdom until she was one with it in all its moods; mischievous, secretive, brooding; full of great and awful visions, steeped body and soul in wood-lore. Her home was out of doors, the cabin of Elspeth her port of call for talking and eating. She had not known, she had scarcely seen, a child ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... chilling cloud, the flower of his opening life has too often withered before it has had time to expand. For what is most cruel in cruelty is its tendency to demoralise its victims, especially those who are of tender years—to harden them, to brutalise them, to make them stubborn and secretive, to make them shifty and deceitful, to throw them back upon themselves, to shut them up within themselves, to quench the joy of their hearts, to numb their sympathies, to cramp their expansive energies, to narrow and darken their whole ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... to be drawn. Much of his success in the paths of crime, both at school and afterwards, was due to his secretive habits. He never ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Havens was strolling about the grounds, under the lamp lights, in and out of dark nooks, and close beside him was a slim figure in white. Their conversation was earnest, their manner secretive; that much the harassed Rossiter could see from the balcony. His heart grew sore and he could almost feel the tears of disappointment surging to his eyes. A glance in his mirror had shown him a face haggard and drawn, eyes strange ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... think so,' I answered, after a moment's deliberation. 'From what I know of Mr. Ashurst, I don't believe it is likely he would have left his will about carelessly anywhere. He was a secretive man, fond of mysteries and mystifications. He would be sure to conceal it. Besides, Lady Georgina and Harold have been taking care of everything in the house ever since ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... tale would stop abruptly, and it was impossible to find out what men said across the border. The Afghans were always a secretive race, and vastly preferred doing something wicked to saying anything at all. They would be quiet and well-behaved for months, till one night, without word or warning, they would rush a police-post, cut ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... the game on his conditions, and feign ignorance of all that he does n't tell," she reminded herself. "But fancy his being so secretive!" ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... yobi-na, -that is to say, pretty names of women; but there are likewise names of men—jitsumyo; [8] and, oddly enough, a girl's name and a man's are in no instance written together. To judge by all this ideographic testimony, lovers in Japan—or at least in Izumo—are even more secretive than in our Occident. The enamoured youth never writes his own jitsumyo and his sweetheart's yobi-na together; and the family name, or myoji, he seldom ventures to inscribe. If he writes his jitsumyo, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... had appeared in the newspapers regarding a dusty and dirty old house in that part of the Heights in Brooklyn whence all that is fashionable had not yet taken flight, a house of mystery, yet not more mysterious than its owner in his secretive comings and goings in the affairs of men of a generation beyond his time. Further than the facts that he was reputed to be very wealthy and led, in the heart of a great city, what was as nearly like the life of a hermit as possible, I knew little ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... the Old Galactic plasmoids had been wrapped up in Federation security measures since the day the plasmoid discovery was announced. And she'd been in the middle of the operations concerning them right along. Why should Holati Tate have turned secretive on her now? When even blabby old Plemponi could ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... wrong. The kleptomaniac is generally recognized as being a well-defined class of the insane. Most of the shop-lifters are women. This is especially a female crime. It is useless to explain why. It is not a daring crime; it is secretive in its nature; it requires more stealth than courage; it especially appeals to women on account of their taste for the finery exhibited at stores. The kleptomaniac, however, is generally a rich or influential woman. She steals something she does not need, and she is ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... arrival in the city I had noticed the large house in our rear, and had asked some questions about it. It had a peculiarly secluded and secretive look. The windows were all shuttered and closed, with the exception of the three on the lower floor and two others directly over these. On the top story they were even boarded up, giving to that portion of the house ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... time, but after a wrangle he gave up the ticket, intending to take it from Tommy when primed with the necessary tale. So they parted until evening, and Tommy returned to Elspeth, secretive but elated. For the rest of the day he was in thought, now waggling his head smugly over some dark, unutterable design and again looking a little scared. In growing alarm she watched his face, and at last she ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... strawstack. They were comfortably sitting down, backs to the straw, eating a substantial lunch. Kurt was angry and did not care. His appearance, however, did not faze the strangers. One of them, an American, was a man of about thirty years, clean-shaven, square-jawed, with light, steely, secretive gray eyes, and a look of intelligence and assurance that did not harmonize with his motley garb. His companion was a foreigner, small of stature, with eyes like a ferret and deep ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... been confined to the one theme. History had also interested him profoundly. He had published a work on the old houses of England. The Priory figured among them. It was not difficult to discover from the conversation of this singular man, whose subtle and secretive instincts were contradicted, at times, by a strange inconsequent frankness, that his genuine feeling for the picturesque was accompanied by an equally strong predilection for the appurtenances of wealth and splendour; his love of great names and estates being almost ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... with many melancholy echoes of wind and breakers and listless human voices, where is a cluster of hopeless, impoverished homes. 'Tis a wilful-minded path, lingering indolently among the hills, artful, intimate, wise with age, and most indulgently secretive of its soft discoveries. It is used to the lagging feet of lovers. There are valleys in its length, and winding, wooded stretches, kindly places; and there are arching alders along the way to provide a seclusion yet more tender. In the moonlight 'tis a path of enchantment—a ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... had his way, though Bennett Addenbrooke showed some temper when he was gone, and I myself shared his annoyance to no small extent. I could only tell him that it was in the nature of Raffles to be self-willed and secretive, but that no man of my acquaintance had half his audacity and determination; that I for my part would trust him through and through, and let him gang his own gait every time. More I dared not say, even to remove those chill misgivings with which ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... at Otford-under-the-Wold carried Amuel Sleggins farther afield than the village, farther afield than the last house in the lane, right up to the big bare wold and the house where no one went, no one that is but the three grim men that dwelt there and the secretive wife of one, and, once a year when the queer green letter came, Amuel Sleggins ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... was; and to me, as I casually met his gaze, looked to be obstinate, secretive and small minded. But who can explain those sudden antagonisms that ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... a line on that old tower," suggested Jane, surveying the secretive old building. "I know the racket was in that wing, and see how the round tower begins here and shoots up past all that outside plumbing? I know Lenox was one time a show building here, but freshies have got to have some place ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... will be seen that the hollow space extends wholly round the toe, and as far back as the commencement of the quarters. In the latter position one is able to observe laminae still in their normal positions and condition. At the toe, however, the horny and secretive laminae are widely separated, and the space between them filled with a yellow, semi-solid material, the remains of the inflammatory exudate and new horn secreted by the keratogenous membrane. The laminae, both horny and sensitive, are greatly enlarged. This ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... this way." Her friend was apparently not prepared with an assent, and she quickly enough pursued: "If he HAD given her any it would come out somehow in her expenditure. She has tremendous liberty and is very secretive, but still ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... she was unable to count the openings she had given him thereto. For one of the frankest of men he had kept his secret, so far as words went, with a remarkable tenacity. Probably the neighbourhood of Mrs. Thornburgh was enough to make the veriest chatterbox secretive. But notwithstanding, no one possessing the clue could live in the same house with him these June days without seeing that the whole man was absorbed, transformed, and that the crisis might be reached at any moment. Even the vicar was eager and watchful, and playing up to his ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... its furniture grown more and more hideous to the eye as early and mid-Victorian fashions and ideals receded and modern taste shook itself free from what was tawdry, fluffy, stuffy, floppy, messy, cheaply imitative, fringed and tasselled and secretive. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... downwards on the window-sill, and came out, embarrassed and secretive, to where he stood. "I just dropped down there a minute ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... in which he and his friend from Chicago were mutually interested. It was not until nine o'clock that evening, when supper was over and Zoeth, having locked up the store, was with them in the sitting-room, that the hitherto secretive fowl came ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... inland prairies, swamps, woods, pastures—everywhere, from Indian River to the Yukon, a sparrow nests. Yet one can hardly associate sparrows with marshes, for they seem out of place in houseless, treeless, half-submerged stretches. These are the haunts of the shyer, more secretive birds. Here the ducks, rails, bitterns, coots,—birds that can wade and swim, eat frogs and crabs,—seem naturally at home. The sparrows are perchers, grain-eaters, free-fliers, and singers; and they, of all birds, are the friends and neighbors of man. This is no place for them. ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... statements advanced by the oldsters. And we had no reply for their argument, or if we had one could not find the language in which to couch it. Besides there was another and a deeper reason. A boy, being what he is, the most sensitive and the most secretive of living creatures regarding his innermost emotions, rarely does bare his real thoughts to his elders, for they, alas, are not young enough to have a fellow feeling, and they are too old and they know too much to be ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... officers. In their secret hearts every one of them was glad that in the deadening monotony of their garrison life this affair, painful as it was, was now assuming tangible proportions. For not a single one of them had any kindly feeling for Kolberg, whose secretive disposition and whose absence from nearly all joint festivities at the Casino had rendered him unpopular, and Frau Kahle herself was scarcely better liked, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... were none of them any good; they none of them knew what it was like to be frit. So she ran away, and left the hot, secretive, omniscient place with its fierce white and ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... turned almost purple; but she had neither her sex's quick instinct of self-protection nor its proneness to dissemble, secretive as she was. She lifted her head haughtily and turned away. For a moment she looked very Spanish, not the unfortunate result of coupled races that she was. Helena, who was in her naughtiest humour, threw back her head and laughed scornfully. "A caballero!" she cried: "who will ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the two stood there facing each other, so sharp was the contrast. The man, the Mongolian, small, weazened, leather-colored, secretive—a strange, complex creature, steeped in all the obscure mystery of the East, nervous, ill at ease; and the girl, the Anglo-Saxon, daughter of the Northmen, huge, blond, big-boned, frank, outspoken, simple of composition, open as the day, bareheaded, her great ropes ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... The naturally secretive person who vaguely refers to "a certain party" when he has occasion to speak of another is the exact ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... woman from St. John's was obdurate. Not a hint escaped her in response to the baiting and awkward interrogation of Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl; and the more they besought her, the more suspicious she grew. She was an obstinate young person—she was precise, she was scrupulous, she was of a secretive, untrustful turn of mind; and as she was ambitious for advancement from the dreary isolation of Point-o'-Bay Cove, she was not to be entrapped or entreated into what she had determined was a breach of discipline. ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... that he postulated God in order to legitimize the powers of Augustin, his deputy. Certain persons very closely acquainted with him (I withhold names) gave a curious account of his character. Usually he was reserved and even secretive, cautious, cold, and free from enthusiasms and follies alike. But at times he appeared to be taken with moods of strong feeling. Then he would speak freely to the first person who might be by, was eager for merriment and dissipation, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... making sacrifices for each other, exhibiting jealousy. The girls are, on the whole, more aggressive than the boys, and less anxious to keep the matter secret. After the age of eight, the girls increase in modesty and the boys become still more secretive. The physical sensations are not usually located in the sexual organs; erection of the penis and hyperaemia of the female sexual parts Bell regards as marking undue precocity. But there is diffused vascular and nervous tumescence and a state of exaltation comparable, though not equal, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a big stretch of the field close to the claim pegged out by Mike and Josh Peetree, and they were thought to have possession of the most profitable part of the alluvial deposit, but worked their claims with great caution, and were as secretive as so many mopokes, so that the whites really had no idea what their ground was like, excepting such as the experienced miners could gather from the general trend of the richer wash dirt. Extraordinary stories ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... have often noticed it, yet have failed to understand why it is. I was right, you see, when I told myself last night and this morning that you were harboring unkindly thoughts toward me. You have not been open with me, you have been willfully secretive, and, believe me, that is a mistake. Candor, complete and perfect, is the only great virtue that will steer one clear through all the shoals and rocks of life. Be honest, above board, and, I can assure you, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... fall, and they tell him there ain't no meat so good as a prime young popcorn-fed elephant, and he'll certainly live high. And just then up rides old Safety First again. So they get silent and mysterious all at once and warn Pete, so Safety will hear it, not to say a word to any one. Pete looks secretive and hostile at the visitor and goes back to his woodpile. Safety naturally says what fool thing have they got into their heads now, and he supposes it's some more ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... thought how pleasant peace and quietness were. But just when it was time to start for The Hurst in order to talk over the disclosures of the night before with Lucia before the class, and perhaps to frame some secretive policy which would obviate further exposure, he remembered that he had left his cigarette-case (the pretty straw one with the turquoise in the corner) in the drawing-room and went to find it. The window was open, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... open spaces. Sergeants' eyes caught and measured him, appraising his physique. Behind and among them he saw Drayton's, and Reveillaud's, and Stephen's eyes; and young Wadham's eyes, strange and secretive and hard. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... sexes, it is more frequently found in men, but that women masturbate with more passion and imaginative fervor.[308] Kellogg, in America, says it is equally prevalent in both sexes, but that women are more secretive. Morris, also in America, considers, on the other hand, that persistent masturbation is commoner in women, and accounts for this by the healthier life and traditions of boys. Pouillet, who studied the matter with considerable thoroughness in France, came to the conclusion ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... not open his own letters. He seemed to be interested in the conversation of these ladies. He was not a reserved man, but a secretive, which is quite a different thing. Reserve is natural—it comes unbidden, and often unwelcome. Secretiveness is born of circumstances. Some men find it imperative to cultivate it, although their soul revolts ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... shyness, of modesty, especially in girls, of self-consciousness and consequent efforts toward self-repression; by the inhibition of the spontaneous, impulsive love-demonstrations so freely indulged in during the previous stage. The boys are more secretive than the girls, but the tendency to conceal the love is present in both. This is the reason why fewer returns came for the years eight to twelve than for the years before and after this period. The children were to a degree successful in hiding their ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... who were your informants," Anita said. "No one except my father's three closest associates had any possible conception of how much he possessed, even approximately, for he was always secretive and conservative in his dealings. Only to Mr. Mallowe, Mr. Rockamore and Mr. Carlis did he ever divulge his plans to the slightest extent. A bankrupt! My father a bankrupt? The very words seem meaningless to me. Dr. Franklin, there must be ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... means or another! I can't change clothes with him as I did with Clara; he's too big, but one way or other I'll save him," said Cap, to herself. She said it to no one else, for the more difficult the enterprise the more determined she was to succeed, and the more secretive she ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... he remarked, "seems to have been what you might call a secretive sort of person. Nobody appears to know anything about him. I remember when he was staying here before that he had no callers, and seemed to spend most of his time sitting in ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he went after occasional voyages, where Robin More still drowsed over his books; where Alan Donn still hunted and fished and golfed, haler at five and fifty than a boy in his early twenties; and where his mother sat and did beautiful broidery, dumbly, inimically, cold as a fish, secretive as a badger, there he would meet the women of the Antrim families, women who knew of the disaster of his marriage, and they would look approvingly at his firm face and smiling, steady eyes, and they would ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... to be wondered at that when a soul is in the throes of such experiences as these, it is a time of storm and stress. Yet often the struggle is carried on alone, in silence, for life becomes secretive. The open frankness of childhood is gone, and only to one in close sympathy will thoughts and feelings which sound foundation depths be revealed. It does not at all follow that because there is a physical tie between two lives, that there ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... interest, and the book was certainly unique in one respect, and that was the absolute sincerity of the author with himself. Montaigne is conscious that we are looking over his shoulder, and Rousseau secretive in comparison with him. The very fact of that sincerity of the author with himself argued a certain greatness of character. Dr. Hickes, who attended Pepys at his deathbed, spoke of him as 'this ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... forcibly. Ellen heard his hoarse voice. As she approached he ceased talking and his listeners relaxed their attention. Ellen's glance ran over them swiftly—Daggs, with his superb head, like that of a hawk, uncovered to the sun; Colter with his lowered, secretive looks, his sand-gray lean face; Jackson Jorth, her uncle, huge, gaunt, hulking, with white in his black beard and hair, and the fire of a ghoul in his hollow eyes; Tad Jorth, another brother of her father's, younger, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... the final surrender. "When was the first moment you began to love me, dear?" "Why, the first moment, that day; didn't you know it then?" This we are led to believe is common experience with the shy and secretive sex. It is enough, in a thousand reported cases, that he passed her window on horseback, and happened to look her way. But with such a look! The mischief was done. But this foundation was too slight for Philip to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... none, and at last lifted several of the curtains that draped the larger part of the octagonal walls. Under the first two that I raised only a blank space of dark wood was visible, but under the third I was surprised to find a small, secretive-looking door. ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... knife was meant for me, I can not say. Nor have I sufficient proof openly to accuse him, but of this much I am convinced. Themar's presence near the camp of Miss Westfall is, in the face of your peculiar and secretive errand, ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... menacing, brutal. Don Anastasio twitched and trembled before it. Under the towering and prismatic Fra Diavolo he cowered, an insignificant figure. The unrelieved black of his attire accorded with his meagre frame. It was secretive, miserly. A black stock covered a withered collar. A dingy silk tile was tightly packed over a rusted black wig. Boots hid their tops under the skirts of his coat, and the coat in turn was partly concealed under a black shawl. But there was one incongruous item. Boots, coat, hat and all ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... looked at Carlisle, and wondered if she possibly had refused Mr. Canning, and, if so, why Mr. Canning had skipped back just to stay over Sunday and not go near her, and why Cally was so mysterious and secretive all of a sudden. She always told Cally every single thing about her affairs, reporting in detail what was "the most" each man said to her, and always bringing her their letters to read, even Mr. Dudley's, who wrote such perfectly beautiful ones. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Some principle of latent heat involved, I believe. Ask Webb. If he could live long enough he'd coax from Nature all her secrets. He's the worst Paul Pry into her affairs that I ever knew. So beware, Amy, unless you are more secretive than Nature, which I cannot believe, since ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the more he was moved; he gossiped freely with the men at the stile, or even with a hamlet old woman. Not a word ever dropped from him of his own difficulties—he kept his mind to himself. His wife knew nothing of his intentions—he was over-secretive, especially about money matters, in which he affected the most profound mystery, as if everyone in Coombe was not perfectly aware they could hardly get a pound of sugar ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... the sinking of his spirit there returned the old haunting pangs—the memory of Allie Lee, the despairing doubts of life or death for her. Beyond the camp loomed the dim hills, mystical, secretive, and unchangeable. If she were out there among them, dead or alive, to know it would be a blessed relief. It was this horror of Benton that ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... there, underneath," she whispered to herself softly; "he is waiting for me to help him." She remembered that she must make that act of faith. Yet was it Laurie who had looked in at his mother's door...? Well, the door was locked now. But that secretive ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... blankets in the cold dawn. We wondered at the extraordinary chance which had kept the old portfolio, with its worn leather edges that I remembered so well, hidden during the two years that had elapsed since his death, and what secretive instinct had led him to put his last will and testament there. We marvelled at the sagacity which had led him to drop hints as to the existence of such a document so effectively that the family had felt themselves ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... August afternoon; and the garden at Hyde Manor was full of scent in all its shady places,—hot lavender, seductive carnation, the secretive intoxication of the large white lilies, and mingling with them the warm smell of ripe fruits from the raspberry hedges, and the apricots and plums turning gold and purple upon ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... tell you, sir," Ned Land replied, "that the Red Sea is just as landlocked as the gulf, since the Isthmus of Suez hasn't been cut all the way through yet; and even if it was, a boat as secretive as ours wouldn't risk a canal intersected with locks. So the Red Sea won't be our way back ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... descending lanes were packed with people, others as deserted as a cemetery; and it was strange to pass from the thronged streets leading to the bazaars to the profound and secretive silence of a quarter of well-to-do dwelling-houses, where only a few veiled women attended by negro slaves moved noiselessly over the clean cobblestones, and the sound of fountains and runnels came from hidden courtyards ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... appear to be but few, and those with an unusual stamp of individuality upon them; figures a trifle strange and obsolete—as of persons by choice hidden away, voluntarily self-removed from the levelling rush and grind of the monster city. The small heavy-browed houses are very secretive, seeming to shelter fallen fortunes, obscure and furtive sins, sorrows which resist alleviation and inquiry. Seen, as to-day, under the low-hanging sky big with rain, in the diffused afternoon light, the place and its inhabitants conveyed an impression low-toned, yet ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... and secretive himself, was apparently not at all moved by this unexpected development. At the same time, never having thought of Stener as having any particular executive or financial ability, he was a little stirred and curious. So his treasurer ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... publication of her losses by lung-fever, yet it is a fact which forbids secrecy that calamity has reached the enterprising breeders, and colossal fortunes have been swept away by the cattle-plague. In our own country it has been no more the policy of secretive owners to publish facts than that of city authorities to proclaim the prevalence of small-pox in the town. Still, startling facts have sprung from original sources of inquiry. A town meeting is called in the State of Connecticut, terror-stricken ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... the spot. I venture to think it not inconceivable that Mr. Grewgious having come down to Cloisterham by a late train, on Christmas Eve, to keep his Christmas appointment with Rosa, paid a darkling visit to the tomb of his lost love, Rosa's mother. Grewgious was very sentimental, but too secretive to pay such a visit by daylight. "A night of memories and sighs" he might "consecrate" to his lost lady love, as Landor did to Rose Aylmer. Grewgious was to have helped Bazzard to eat a turkey on Christmas Day. But he could get out of that engagement. ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... for liquor, which is augmented by the mother's use of ale or lager during gestation and nursing, and the child enters the world with a natural taste for intoxicants. A thief transmits to his offspring a secretive, dishonest, sneaking disposition; and the child comes into the world ticketed for the State prison by the nearest route. So with other evil tendencies. By legislation or by some other means, measures should be speedily adopted for the prevention ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... the forward deck of the boat, Kellogg and another man who would be Ernst Mallin. A third man came out of the control cabin after the boat was off contragravity. Jack didn't like Mallin. He had a tight, secretive face, with arrogance and bigotry showing underneath. The third man was younger. His face didn't show anything much, but his coat showed a bulge under the left arm. After being introduced by Kellogg, Mallin introduced him ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... he said. "He is so secretive. But Mrs. Wellington can't be pleased at having a Navy man masquerading about. Why ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... moment. This idea was disagreeable to her, and she was reminded again, with pain, of her aunt's secretive habits. Morris, the reader may be informed, had had the tact not to tell her that he sat in her father's study. He had known her but for a few months, and her aunt had known her for fifteen years; and yet he would not have made the mistake of thinking that Catherine ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... side, Uraga has several motives for not letting his subordinate into the knowledge of all his complicated schemes; among them one springing from a moral peculiarity. He is of a strangely-constituted nature, secretive to the last degree—a quality or habit in which he prides himself. It is his delight to practice it whenever the opportunity offers; just as the thief and detective officer take pleasure in their respective callings beyond the mere prize to be ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... one afternoon the following week. Day after day, she had hurried swiftly to the letter-rack on her arrival at college in the morning, and during the intervals between lectures. Several times, swiftly, with secretive fingers, she had plucked his letter down from its public prominence, and fled across the hall holding it fast and hidden. She read her letters in the botany laboratory, where her corner was always ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... idea what girls John Thomas had taken out. She went to Nora Purdy. Nora was a tall, rather pale, but well-built girl, with beautiful yellow hair. She was rather secretive. ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... make some passionate rejoinder. Then, all at once, she checked herself, and again Sara was conscious of that curiously secretive expression in her eyes, as ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... swinging doors revolve and three bundles of fur mince in. The theatre comes afterward; then a table at the Midnight Frolic—of course, mother will be along there, but she will serve only to make things more secretive and brilliant as she sits in solitary state at the deserted table and thinks such entertainments as this are not half so bad as they are painted, only rather wearying. But the P. D. is in love again... it was odd, wasn't it?—that though there was so much room left in the taxi the P. D. and the ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... into the church and had to stand back by the door, for as it was, he made a spectacle of himself. My suspicion is"—and here every lady stopped eating and sat up straight—"that the Sawyer girls have lost money. They don't know a thing about business 'n' never did, and Mirandy's too secretive and contrairy to ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pain the sullen, secretive girl had turned instinctively to the one person who had been uniformly gentle and kind to her throughout all her trouble. Nothing that Amy had done or said, had turned Ruth from her; and the barriers of girl's nature and of her evil passions were ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... now and take on a few drinks. Hunt up an old friend or two and wag your chins. Make it right secretive and confidential and make each one promise faithful not to breathe a syllable to another living soul. That way the news is ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... in various parts of Russia behave, as though by agreement, precisely in the same way as this young man, and in all these cases the government has adopted the same timorous, undecided, and secretive course of action. Some of these men are sent to the lunatic asylum, some are enrolled as clerks and transferred to Siberia, some are sent to work in the forests, some are sent to prison, some are fined. And at this very time some men of this ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... and the comely external utterance that they make of their internal comfort. Now the others are, as I have said, both furtive and bedevilled; they are sly and grotesque; they combine their sort of feverish grandeur with their sort of secretive baseness, after the manner of a Charles the Ninth. They are peopled for me with persons of the same fashion. Dwarfs and sinister people in cloaks are about them; and I seem to divine crypts, and, as I said, trap-doors. O ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Browning's inner or outer life in 1833 and 1834. It was a secretive, not a productive period. One by one certain pinnacles of his fair snow-mountain of Titanic aim melted away. He began to realise the first disenchantment of the artist: the sense of dreams never to be accomplished. That land of the great unwritten poems, the great unpainted pictures: ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... However secretive Mademoiselle Thuillier might be,—and she said nothing of her investments to any one, not even to her brother, although a large amount of Madame Thuillier's fortune went to swell the amount of her own savings,—it was difficult to prevent some ray ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... not merely enthroned, he is enshrined. To the nobility he is omnipotence, and to the rabble mystery. Since the occupation of the country by the Jesuits, many foreigners have fancied that the government is becoming more and more silent, insidious, secretive; and that this midnight council is but the expression of a "policy of stifling." It is an inquisition,—not overt, audacious, like that of Rome, but nocturnal, invisible, subtle, ubiquitous, like that of Spain; proceeding without witnesses or warning; kidnapping a subject, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Vladimir Ulianov, and that's what he called himself. He had proved to be reticent, secretive, deceitful, diligent, and utterly unhuman. His lower lip was shaped as though something dripped from it. Blood, perhaps. His eyes were brown and not entirely unattractive. But God makes the eyes; the mouth is ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... reader may perhaps have inferred, was of a nature profoundly secretive. It was in most things quite as pleasant for him to keep matters to himself, as it was to Miss Emily to tell them to somebody else. She resembled more than anything one of those trotting, chattering little brooks that enliven the "back lot" of many a New England home, while he was like one of ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... know,"—with that grave, secretive look of the insane. "I had to go. So I made a light. I wanted to write a letter to my brother, but my head was so tired I could not; then I took my little Testament, and I marked the fourteenth chapter of St. John. He knew that I liked that best, and I thought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... came over him as the days passed. He became silent and secretive and suspicious, and the sheriff spoke to Mr. Excell about it. "I don't understand that boy of yours. He seems to be in training for a contest of some kind. He's quiet enough in daytime, or when I'm around, but when he thinks ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... and then lost in the pungency of the opium. The latter became, mystically, all China, the irresistible fascination that had gradually possessed his imagination, dulling the associations of his heredity and birth, calling him further and further into its secretive heart. ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... my grievance was not with the secretive methods of the Bulgarians—they were wise and necessary—but with the wild fictions which some correspondents thought to be the proper response to ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... man, in lighting his pipe, had shown his face. At the thought of a warm engine-room and the company of his fellow-creatures, David's heart leaped with pleasure. He advanced quickly. And then something in the appearance of the tug, something mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No lights showed from her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks were empty. But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from her funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose. David stood uncertainly, questioning whether to make his ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... and others of the suite had smiles and quips for humbler girls than princesses. I saw one of the awesome whiskerandos from Paris, haughty and secretive toward the French, lighting the cigarette of a blanchisseuse at the Pool of Psyche, his arm about her, and his black bristles nearer than necessary to her ripe mouth. A merchant dining away from home slapped caressingly the hips of the girls who waited upon him, nor concealed his gestures. Hypocrisy ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... secretive, but I thought it was only fair to you to keep my own counsel. Now you can report to mother that you knew nothing, and that therefore you ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... I left him: he'd paid his bill at the Rest and his bag was aboard. Must have had this in his pocket all the time; might just as well have handed it to me—with instructions not to open it—and saved the stamp. What a secretive old ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... gloves for unfortunate gents. Besides this wide knowledge of the human species, Masie had acquired other information. She had listened to the promulgated wisdom of the 2,999 other girls and had stored it in a brain that was as secretive and wary as that of a Maltese cat. Perhaps nature, foreseeing that she would lack wise counsellors, had mingled the saving ingredient of shrewdness along with her beauty, as she has endowed the silver fox of the priceless fur above the ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... out the sixty thousand pounds' worth of bonds to Tracy, who was waiting with his three warning lights, failed because of old Blumenfeld's sleeplessness, but it was substituted by a far more secretive yet simple plan—one never even dreamed of by the astute police attached to the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway. It being daylight at Lyons, ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... was clever enough not to appear too secretive, and was thanking his stars that Elkin had introduced the very topic he ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... door leading into the women's building, and Brigit and Monny entered the same secretive sort of vestibule they must have remembered in the House of the Crocodile. A screen-wall prevented them from seeing what was beyond; and the dead silence frightened them a little, so easy was it to make ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... was inclined to make of something they were talking of a direct application to herself, she wholly failed to assist him; she made no response. Whereupon, once, with a spark of ardent irritation, he told her she was very "secretive." At this she colored a little, and he said that in default of any larger confidence it would at least be a satisfaction to make her confess to that charge. But even this satisfaction she denied him, and his only revenge was in making, two or three ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... himself as best he could with a walking-stick, not only saved his own life but that of his fellow-officer, Lieutenant Conder, who had been beaten to the earth with an Arab club. He continued his work indeed with prosaic pertinacity, and developed in the survey of the Holy Land all that almost secretive enthusiasm for detail which lasted all his life. Of the most famous English guide-book he made the characteristic remark, "Where Murray has seven names I have a hundred and sixteen." Most men, in speaking or writing of such a thing, would certainly have said "a hundred." It is characteristic ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... face walked across the state to Tarrytown. Several times during the five years after leaving Lem's scow she walked to Tarrytown, returning only when she had seen the little boy, to take up her squatter life in her father's hut. So secretive was she that no one had been taken into her confidence; neither had she interfered with her child in any way. Never once, hitherto, had her senses left her on those long country marches toward the east; ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... secretive woman. She could even be silent about her neighbours' affairs. Susini had been guided by a quick intuition, characteristic of his race, when he had confided in this Frenchwoman. She had been some hours in the baron's hospital before she ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... was increased somewhat, Roberts was made fully aware of the presence of the secretive enemies, who still kept under cover—cover that was fast becoming cane brake and wilderness, as cultivation grew ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... strange; but he is a secretive Dutchman by nature. He specializes in prying into the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... and there is small doubt but that the friendship and trust which characterized her feelings towards him would soon have ripened into more passionate love, but for the advent into her life of the mysterious hero, who by his personality, his strange, secretive ways, his talk of patriotism and liberty, at once took complete possession of ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... said by certain gentlemen who were associated with President Wilson on the other side that he was unyielding and dogmatic, that he insisted upon playing a "lone hand," that he was secretive and exclusive, and that he ignored the members of the Peace Commission and the experts who accompanied him to ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... black of semi-clerical cut held the receiver, and the effect of the names as given over the wire was, to put it mildly, electrical. His jaw dropped and he stared across the table at a man who was seated there. At the repetition of the name, the other arose, and with the stealthily secretive movement of a coyote near its prey he circled the table, and drew a chair close to the telephone. The pencil and paper was in his hand, not in that of "James." That other ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... not be easy to say which is our finest or most beautiful wild flower, but certainly the most poetic and the best beloved is the arbutus. So early, so lowly, so secretive there in the moss and dry leaves, so fragrant, tinged with the hues of youth and health, so hardy and homelike, it touches the ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... "Commissioner So-and-So has the matter in hand—refer to him." And so, when a new danger appeared on the distressed horizon, Amir Khan and a hundred thousand massed horsemen, Captain Barlow was sent to consult with the Resident. That was the way; a secretive, trusty, brave man, for in India the ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... was a favourite with the mediaeval Arabs. Its effect varies greatly with men's characters, making some open-hearted and communicative, and others more cunning and secretive than in the normal state. So far it is an excellent detection of disposition, and many a man passes off well when sober who has shown himself in liquor a rank snob. Among the lower orders it provokes what the Persians call Bad-masti (le vin mechant) ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... at this moment caused by a victory won over her Cousin Lisbeth's perversity; she had just wrung from her an avowal she had been hoping for these three years past. However secretive an old maid may be, there is one sentiment which will always avail to make her break her fast from words, and that is her vanity. For the last three years, Hortense, having become very inquisitive on such matters, had pestered her cousin with questions, which, however, bore the stamp of perfect ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac |
