Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X 7.7.45

Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X - IT would be superfluous, and, perhaps, a sickening task, to detail at length the mode and manner in which Vargrave coiled his snares round the unfortunate girl whom his destiny had marked out for his prey.  He was right in foreseeing that, after the first amazement caused by the letter of Maltravers, Evelyn would feel resentment crushed beneath her certainty of his affection her incredulity at his self-accusations, and her secret conviction that some reverse, some misfortune he was unwilling she should share, was the occasion of his farewell and flight.  Vargrave therefore very soon communicated to Evelyn the tale he had suggested to Maltravers. He reminded her of the habitual sorrow, the evidence of which was so visible in Lady Vargrave; of her indifference to the pleasures of the world; of her sensitive shrinking from all recurrence to her early fate. "The secret of this," said he, "is in a youthful and most fervent attachment; your mother loved a young stranger above her in rank, who (his head being full of German romance) was then roaming about the country on pedestrian and adventurous excursions, under the assumed name of Butler.  By him she was most ardently beloved in return.  Her father, perhaps, suspected the rank of her lover, and was fearful of her honour being compromised.

• Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X by Edward Bulwer Lytton.
• And Alice!--Will the world blame us if you are left happy at the last?
• We are daily banishing from our law-books the statutes that disproportion
  punishment to crime.
• Daily we preach the doctrine that we demoralize wherever we strain justice into cruelty.
• It is time that we should apply to the Social Code the Wisdom we recognize in Legislation! 
• It is time that we should do away with the punishment of death for inadequate
  offences, even in books.
• It is time that we should allow the morality of atonement, and permit to Error the right to hope, as the reward ofsubmission to its suffering.
• Nor let it be thought that the close to Alice's career can offer temptation to the offence of its commencement.
• Eighteen years of sadness, a youth consumed in silent sorrow over the grave of Joy, have images that throw over these pages a dark and warning.