The Story of Ivy quotes

“

By instinct, my dear! If I were you I should give pretty Mrs. Lexton a very wide berth.

”

Lady Flora looked a little puzzled. “He was quite right.

Money is not catching, though I suppose most people wish it were.

”

“A great many people are convinced that it is, Flora, and our little Ivy is among them.

I’m sure she feels that if she rubs herself up against it close enough, a little will certainly come off.

And I’m not sure, in her case, that she’s not right!”

The other said sharply, “You know nothing of the sort! You’ve not got what I call a conscience, Mrs. Lexton.

But a conscience nowadays is a very old-fashioned attribute. Many a young woman would hardly know what to do with one if she had it!

”

“I saw trouble in your hand; I saw trouble in the crystal; I saw great trouble in the cards. Yet, Mrs. Lexton, you are not a woman who troubles trouble before trouble troubles you.

Even so, unless you follow my advice about your present lover, I see misfortune galloping towards you like a riderless horse.

”

“I saw trouble in your hand; I saw trouble in the crystal; I saw great trouble in the cards.

Yet, Mrs. Lexton, you are not a woman who troubles trouble before trouble troubles you.

Even so, unless you follow my advice about your present lover, I see misfortune galloping towards you like a riderless horse.”

Miles Rushworth was leading the little company.

He was the kind of man who always does lead the way.

Though he was now only two or three tables off, Ivy realised that he had not yet seen her, and so she was able to cast on him a long measuring glance.

… once more a popular member of the happy-go-lucky, while for the most part financially solid, set with whom she had danced, played bridge, lunched, and supped through life, in the days when she and her husband were still living on what remained of Jervis’s fortune.

But woman does not live by amusement alone.

Ivy loved being loved, so she had “made it up” with Roger Gretorex.

“

A great many dreadful things go on in this strange world, my darling love.

”

“

The doctor, nine times out of ten, gives her the benefit of the doubt!

”

That night Ivy lay for a long, long while with eyes wide open in the darkness. What had just happened filled her with a kind of awe.

She had not known how easy and simple is the passage from life to death.

She reminded herself how very kind, how good a pal, she had always been to poor Jervis, and how happy he had been these last two months, owing to Miles Rushworth.

Berwick had been puzzled—he had said as much to her. But she had got on much better with him during the last couple of days, since, in fact, he had seen that she really could not endure the sight of poor Jervis’s sufferings. …

The word “death,” which means so much to the great majority of men and women, meant very little to Ivy Lexton.

Indeed, she felt, as she lay there in the darkness, that this man who had been her lover-comrade had only gone away out of her life on a long journey—a journey from which, however, he was never to return.

For all his odd ideas, and to Ivy his ideas as to morality were indeed singular, she realised that he had his weather eye very much open. She would henceforth have to be what to herself she vaguely called “a good woman.”

But then, how easy it is to be a good woman when one has a hundred thousand a year!

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you, doctor, I shall never forget how awfully kind you’ve been.”

Till a few moments ago she had thought Dr. Berwick very unkind, but Ivy Lexton was dowered with so great a power of self-deception that she really did believe what she had just said.

As the doctor was going quickly through the hall, Nurse Bradfield came out of the dining-room.

Well, in so far as she could help him, she’d do anything. Lie for him? Of course she would!

Where’s the good of caring for a person if you’re not willing to do anything for him or her?

Such was Mrs. Huntley’s simple philosophy of life. She was a good hater as well as a good lover. In her fashion she loved Gretorex, but she hated Ivy Lexton.

Such was Mrs. Huntley’s simple philosophy of life. She was a good hater as well as a good lover. In her fashion she loved Gretorex, but she hated Ivy Lexton.

Those who are called “the poor” are seldom deceived in a man’s or a woman’s real nature and character.

They are too close up against the hard realities of life to make many mistakes. It requires no touchstone to teach them the difference between dross and gold.

Those who are called “the poor” are seldom deceived in a man’s or a woman’s real nature and character. They are too close up against the hard realities of life to make many mistakes.

It requires no touchstone to teach them the difference between dross and gold.

About three o’clock the telephone bell rang again.

“But you saw much more of Mrs. Lexton than you did of her husband?”

This was a bow drawn at a venture, and it brought down the quarry.

“I sometimes escorted Mrs. Lexton to a picture gallery, and now and again we went to a theatre together. But—” he waited a moment, and the colour ebbed from his face. Though what he was going to say was true, he hated saying it—“Mr.

But whereas Inspector Orpington had liked and pitied her, Rushworth’s lawyer already regretted that, if only as a matter of common humanity, he must now secure for her the best legal advice in his power.

John Oram had the faults of his qualities.

His life’s work had brought him in contact with more than one skilful adventuress. But against such a woman, when she came across his path, the dice were already loaded.

At last, reluctantly, Finch shut the door.

How useful it would be, sometimes, to find oneself in two places at once!

Being the manner of woman she was, Mrs. Gretorex did not try to conceal anything of what was in her heart from her old and trusted friend.

She felt quite differently from what she had felt the day before, and happier from every point of view.

For fear, that most haunting of secret housemates, had gone from her.

Indeed, after seeing Mr. Oram, she had spent the rest of the afternoon at the establishment of the dressmaker who was just then the fashion in her set.

It seemed to her impossible that anyone could disregard the wishes of so important and, above all, so wealthy a man as Miles Rushworth.

To Ivy the sound of money talking drowned every other sound in life.

But this, to her discomfiture, was not the case with John Oram.

She had never seen this woman whom she now knew that Roger loved, but she had formed a fairly clear and true impression of Ivy’s nature and character.

Hatred, as well as love, has sometimes the power of tearing asunder the most skilfully woven web of lies.

And then there began for them all what seemed an interminable time of waiting.

At last, after what seemed both to Paxton-Smith and to his client a long drive, the car drew up by a side door of the great frowning building called by that name of dread to every evildoer the Old Bailey.

What an awesome, and in some ways superb, spectacle is the scene presented by every British trial for murder!

And if this is always true, even in the humblest country town Assize Court, how much more tense and awe-inspiring is what takes place in the courthouse of the Old Bailey, when the prisoner in the dock is the central figure in a murder mystery …

There was yet another point which made this judicial drama appear, to use a phrase sometimes used in such a connection, “a full-dress trial.”

Justice may be blind, yet she can see the glitter of gold.

No money had been spared on either side. Indeed, judging by the array of counsel engaged, there must have been limitless wealth available for the defence. And, in a sense, there was, for Mrs.

Ivy was so helpless-looking, so fragile, so appealing, as well as so exceedingly lovely.

She seemed, indeed, to some of those watching her, like some poor little delicate furry creature caught in a cruel steel trap.

Had she flirted dangerously, heartlessly, with Roger Gretorex? Even that seemed doubtful to some of those listening to her low-toned replies to counsel for the Crown.

Now those were the last words Sir Joseph had intended Ivy Lexton to utter in answer to his question. And the knowledge that this was so caused a murmur of—was it amusement?—to run through the Court.

The public much enjoy hearing a witness score off counsel.

“And what did you answer to that?” he asked sharply.

Lexton knows a good deal more than she admitted yesterday in the witness-box. I can’t help suspecting that there is some man, a stranger to the case, but well known to her, who had some vital interest in compassing Jervis Lexton’s death.

Far stranger things happen in real life than any novelist would dare to put in a story, Miss Dent.

Men, aye, and women too, are more unscrupulous than any ordinary person would imagine. Even Mr. Oram would agree to that. If we can find among Mrs.

As Ivy still said nothing, only looked at her with an expression of fear, and yes, of dislike, on her lovely face, Enid exclaimed desperately, “I am sure you would do anything to help Roger Gretorex, Mrs. Lexton?”

And then Ivy did what all through her life she had often done, when in doubt. She burst into tears.

“Of course, I’d do anything,” she sobbed, “anything I could do! But what can I do? I’ve gone through such an awful time. No one knows what I’ve gone through, or how miserable I’ve been. No one thinks of me!” she ended hysterically.

“All I can say now is, thank God you did do wrong, Mrs. Huntley! But don’t you worry—we won’t let him ever know you did what you did. After all, anyone who found those pieces might have put them together, eh?

Why people don’t burn compromising documents always beats me!

I’ve got a cab at the end of the street, and I want you to come along this very minute to a Commissioner of Oaths. I’ve got all you’ve told me in black and white.

“

Because Eddie Law is a highly moral man. He loathes the sins he’s not inclined to.

” Sir Joseph added candidly, “Most of us do, me dear.”

He thought it probable that this consisted of a series of letters between Mrs. Lexton and Miles Rushworth. Even a man of huge wealth does not give something for nothing to an attractive woman.

Lawyers are apt to overlook the exception which proves the rule in life.

Had Mr. Finch been able to look through a blank wall, he would have seen Mr. Oram sitting at his writing-table, and looking across it straight at Miles Rushworth.