'I don't quite deserve this, Lady Petherwin.'

'Really, one would imagine that women wrote their books during those
dreams in which people have no moral sense, to see how improper some,
even virtuous, ladies become when they get into print.'

'I might have done a much more unnatural thing than write those poems.
And perhaps I might have done a much better thing, and got less praise.
But that's the world's fault, not mine.'

'You might have left them unwritten, and shown more fidelity.'

'Fidelity! it is more a matter of humour than principle. What has
fidelity to do with it?'

'Fidelity to my dear boy's memory.'

'It would be difficult to show that because I have written so-called
tender and gay verse, I feel tender and gay. It is too often assumed
that a person's fancy is a person's real mind. I believe that in the
majority of cases one is fond of imagining the direct opposite of one's
principles in sheer effort after something fresh and free; at any rate,
some of the lightest of those rhymes were composed between the deepest
fits of dismals I have ever known. However, I did expect that you might
judge in the way you have judged, and that was my chief reason for not
telling you what I had done.'

'You don't deny that you tried to escape from recollections you ought to
have cherished? There is only one thing that women of your sort are as
ready to do as to take a man's name, and that is, drop his memory.'