Rebecca: Chapters 1–5

Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers.

Ivy held prior place in this lost garden, the long strands crept across the lawns, and soon would encroach upon the house itself.

He will talk quickly and eagerly about nothing at all, snatching at any subject as a panacea to pain.

Oh, the Test matches that have saved us from ennui, the boxing bouts, even the billiard scores.

Like old ladies caught at their ablutions, the pigeons would flutter from their hiding-place, shocked into silly agitation, and, making a monstrous to-do with their wings, streak away from us above the tree-tops, and so out of sight and sound.

I suppose it is his dependence upon me that has made me bold at last. At any rate I have lost my diffidence, my timidity, my shyness with strangers.

It was not a sight that engendered in me great appetite for my own cold choice, and looking away from her I saw that the table next to ours, left vacant for three days, was to be occupied once more.

He looked down at us, mocking, faintly sardonic, a ghost of a smile on his lips.

I expected the room to be empty, nobody lunched generally before one o’clock. It was empty, except for the table next to ours. This was a contingency for which I was unprepared.

I’ve enjoyed this hour with you more than I have enjoyed anything for a very long time. You’ve taken me out of myself, out of despondency and introspection, both of which have been my devils for a year.

The moment I spoke I regretted my words, for the secret, inscrutable look came back in his eyes again, and once again I suffered the intolerable discomfort that floods one after lack of tact.

I remembered Mrs. Van Hopper's warning of the night before about putting myself forward, and was embarrassed that he might think my talk of Monaco was a subterfuge to win a lift.

A change had come upon our afternoon, it was not the thing of gossamer it had been.

“The trouble is, with me laid up like this you haven’t got enough to do," she said, mashing her cigarette in a jar of cleansing cream, and taking the cards in her hand she mixed them in the deft, irritating shuffle of the inveterate player, shaking them in threes, snapping the backs.

There was something sordid about the tumbled sheets, the sprawling blankets and the thumped pillows, and that bedside table dusty with powder, spilt scent, and melting liquid rouge.