It is well known that a man, when wooing a lady to be his wife, must first win over the females she most confides in—her friends, of course, and her sister, if she has one.

She was trying to sound tough and impatient, but she knew that vulnerable desire to be wooed was still brimming in her tone.

A young lady's most natural ally is her sister although sometimes our own relatives are as inscrutable to us as an antipodean.

She thought of Henry and Diana on the stoop gazing at each other with the confusion and sadness of two puppies who have just stumbled into their first puddle and not yet come to understand what has happened to them and found that she wanted to lie extravagantly.

The first stab of love is like a sunset, a blaze of color -- oranges, pearly pinks, vibrant purples...

It was like the color of his eyes, she supposed - not quite one shade or another, and utterly unlike anyone else's.