Gone with the Wind: Chapters 1–3

The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor.

Brent's wide ingenuous face was puzzled and mildly indignant.

Until the previous summer, Stuart had courted India Wilkes with the approbation of both families and the entire County.

He bore the honor gravely and with no untoward conceit, as though it were only his due.

Whom Mammy loved, she chastened. And, as her love for Scarlett and her pride in her were enormous, the chastening process was practically continuous.

For two years he had squired her about the County, to balls, fish fries, picnics and court days, never so often as the Tarleton twins or Cade Calvert, never so importunate as the younger Fontaine boys, but, still, never the week went by that Ashley did not come calling at Tara.

No one would ever have the temerity to think of Gerald O'Hara as a ridiculous little figure.

It had never occurred to him that only one voice was obeyed on the plantation — the soft voice of his wife Ellen. It was a secret he would never learn, for everyone from Ellen down to the stupidest field hand was in a tacit and kindly conspiracy to keep him believing that his word was law.

Scarlett had not a subtle bone in her body; and Gerald was so much like her he never failed to penetrate her weak subterfuges, even as she penetrated his.

I like him, but it's neither heads nor tails I can make of most he says. Now, Puss, tell me true, do you understand his folderol about books and poetry and music and oil paintings and such foolishness?

She was going to say "when you haven't the man you want," but Gerald, incensed by the cavalier way in which she treated his proffered gift, the thing which, next to Ellen, he loved best in the whole world uttered a roar.

Old Angus had never manumitted a single slave.

Gerald was likable, and the neighbors learned...that a kind heart, a ready and sympathetic ear and an open pocketbook lurked just behind his bawling voice and his truculent manner.

He did not know that he had taken nearly ten years to arrive, for it never occurred to him that his neighbors had eyed him askance at first.

Ellen, by soft-voiced admonition, and Mammy, by constant carping, labored to inculcate in her the qualities that would make her truly desirable as a wife.