On the doorstep Adele met Tony Limps field. She hurried him into her motor, and told the chauffeur not to drive on." News!" she said. "Lucia's going to have a lover."" No!" said Tony in the Rissole manner"But I tell you she is. He's with her now."" They won't want me then," said Tony. "And yet she asked me to come at half-past five."" Nonsense, my dear. They will want you, both of them. . . . Oh Tony, don't you see? It's a stunt." Tony assumed the rapt expression of Lucasfilm receiving intelligence." Tell me all about it," he said." I'm sure I'm right," said she. "Her poppet came in just now, and she held his hand as women do, and made him draw his chair up to her, and said he scolded her. I'm not sure that he knows yet. But I saw that he guessed something was up. I wonder if he's clever enough to do it properly. . . . I wish she had chosen you, Tony, you'd have done it perfectly. They have got--don't you understand?--to have the appearance of being lovers, everyone must think they are lovers, while all the time there's nothing at all of any sort in it. It's a stunt: it's a play: it's a glory."" But perhaps there is something in it," said Tony. "I really think I had better not go in."" Tony, trust me. Lucia has no more idea of keeping a real lover than of keeping a chimpanzee. She's as chaste as snow, a kiss would scorch her. Besides, she hasn't time. She asked Stephen there in order to show him to me, and to show him to you. It's the most wonderful plan; and it's wonderful of me to have understood it so quickly. You must go in: there's nothing private of any kind: indeed, she thirsts for publicity." Her confidence inspired confidence, and Tony was naturally consumed with curiosity. He got out, told Adele's chauffeur to drive on, and went upstairs. Stephen was no longer sitting in the chair next to Lucia, but on the sofa at the other side of the tea-table. This rather looked as if Adele was right: it was consistent anyhow with their being lovers in public, but certainly not lovers in private." Dear Lord Tony," said Lucia--this appellation was a halfway house between Lord Limps field and Tony, and she left out the "Lord" except to him--"how nice of you to drop in. You have just missed Adele. Stephen, you know Lord Limps field?" Lucia gave him his tea, and presently getting up, reseated herself negligently on the sofa beside Stephen. She was a shade too close at first, and edged slightly away." Wonderful play of Chekhov's the other day," she said. "Such a strange, unhappy atmosphere. We came out, didn't we, Stephen, feeling as if we had been in some remote dream. I saw you there, Lord Tony, with Adele who had been lunching with me." Tony knew that: was not that the birthday of the Lucasfilm?

— E.F. Benson

Or do you like being frightened?” Hugh, though generally intelligent, is dense in certain ways; this is one of them.“Why, of course, I like being frightened,” I said. “I want to be made to creep and creep and creep. Fear is the most absorbing and luxurious of emotions. One forgets all else if one is afraid.

— E.F. Benson

Philosophers have argued about the strongest emotion known to man. Some say ‘love’, others ‘hate’, others ‘fear’. I am disposed to put ‘curiosity’ on a level, at least, with these august sensations, just mere simple inquisitiveness.

— E.F. Benson

She paused a moment." Pepino, shall I tell all our dear friends our little secret?" she said. "If you say 'no,' I shan't. But, please, Pepin--"Pepin, however, had been instructed to say 'yes,' and accordingly did so.

— E.F. Benson

She's been, but she's coming back," he said. "I expect her every minute. Ah! There she is." This was rather stupid of Stephen. He ought to have guessed that Lucia's second appearance was officially intended to be her first. He grasped that when she squeezed her way through the crowd and greeted him as if they had not met before that morning." And dearest Adele," she said. "What a crush! Tell me quickly, where are the caricatures of Pepin and me? I'm dying to see them; and when I see them no doubt I shall wish I was dead." The light of Luciaphilism came into Adele's intelligent eyes...

— E.F. Benson

She was a gardener of the ruthless type, and went for any small green thing that incautiously showed a timid spike above the earth, suspecting it of being a weed. She had had a slight difference with the professional gardener who had hitherto worked for her on three afternoons during the week, and had told him that his services were no longer required. Furthermore, she meant to do her gardening herself this year, and was confident that a profusion of beautiful flowers and a plethora of delicious vegetables would be the result. At the end of her garden path was a barrow of rich manure, which she proposed, when she had finished the slaughter of the innocents, to dig into the depopulated beds. On the other side of her paling her neighbor Georgie Pillion was rolling his strip of lawn, on which during the summer he often played croquet on a small scale. Occasionally they shouted remarks to each other, but as they got more and more out of breath with their exertions the remarks got fewer. Mrs. Quantico's last question had been "What do you do with slugs, Georgie?" and Georgie had panted out, "Pretend you don't see them.

— E.F. Benson

The functions of the human frame are, broadly speaking, known. They are a country, anyhow, that has been charted and mapped out. But outside that lie huge tracts of undiscovered country, which certainly exist, and the real pioneers of knowledge are those who, at the cost of being derided as credulous and superstitious, want to push on into those misty and probably perilous places. I felt that I could be of more use by setting out without compass or knapsack into the mists than by sitting in a cage like a canary and chirping about what was known. Besides, teaching is very, very bad for a man who knows himself only to be a learner: you only need to be a self-conceited ass to teach.

— E.F. Benson

The narrator, I think, must succeed in frightening himself before he can think of frightening his reader…

— E.F. Benson

The news that she had gone of course now spread rapidly, and by lunchtime Rissole had made up its mind what to do, and that was hermetically to close its lips forever on the subject of Lucia. You might think what you pleased, for it was a free country, but silence was best. But this counsel of perfection was not easy to practice next day when the evening paper came. There, for all the world to read were two quite long paragraphs, in "Five o'clock Chit-Chat," over the renowned signature of Hermione, entirely about Lucia and 25 Brampton Square, and therefore all the world to see was the reproduction of one of her most elegant photographs, in which she gazed dreamily outwards and a little upwards, with her fingers still pressed on the last chord of (probably) the Moonlight Sonata. . . . She had come up, so Hermione told countless readers, from her Elizabethan country seat at Rissole (where she was a neighbor of Miss Olga Bravely) and was settling for the season in the beautiful little house in Brampton Square, which was the freehold property of her husband, and had just come to him on the death of his aunt. It was a veritable treasure house of exquisite furniture, with a charming music-room where Lucia had given Hermione a cup of tea from her marvelous Worcester tea service. . . . (At this point Daisy, whose hands were trembling with passion, exclaimed in a loud and injured voice, "The very day she arrived!") Mrs. Lucas (one of the Warwickshire Smythe's by birth) was, as all the world knew, a most accomplished musician and Shakespearean scholar, and had made Rissole a center of culture and art. But nobody would suspect the blue stocking in the brilliant, beautiful and witty hostess whose presence would lend an added gaiety to the London season. Daisy was beginning to feel physically unwell. She hurried over the few remaining lines, and then ejaculating "Witty! Beautiful!" sent de Var across to Georgie's with the paper, bidding him to return it, as she hadn't finished with it. But she thought he ought to know. . . . Georgie read it through, and with admirable self-restraint, sent Flambé back with it and a message of thanks--nothing more--to Mrs. Quantico for the loan of it. Daisy, by this time feeling better, memorized the whole of it. Life under the new conditions was not easy, for a mere glance at the paper might send any true Riseholmite into a paroxysm of chattering rage or a deep disgusted melancholy. The Times again recorded the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Philip Lucas had arrived at 25 Brampton Square, there was another terrible paragraph headed 'Dinner,' stating that Mrs. Sandman entertained the following to dinner. There was an Ambassador, a Marquis, a Countess (dowager), two Viscounts with wives, a Baronet, a quantity of Honorable and Knights, and Mr. and Mrs. Philip Lucas. Every single person except Mr. and Mrs. Philip Lucas had a title. The list was too much for Mrs. Boucher, who, reading it at breakfast, suddenly exclaimed:"I didn't think it of them. And it's a poor consolation to know that they must have gone in last." Then she hermetically sealed her lips again on this painful subject, and when she had finished her breakfast (her appetite had quite gone) she looked up every member of that degrading party in Colonel Boucher's "Who's Who.

— E.F. Benson

There is a certain amount which I shan't mention publicly," Elizabeth said. "Things about Lucia which I should never dream of stating openly."" Those are just the ones I should like to hear about most," said Diva. "Just a few little tidbits.

— E.F. Benson