Rumors Quotes
"But elegant New York has not given up hope for a fine winter season of evenings at the opera and gay cotillions."
"I work at Weingarten the furriers’," the girl went on shyly. "I’ve seen you once or twice from the backroom."
"You see how transformed my son is," Mr. Schoonmaker said. "He is inconsolable. The current mayor’s handling of Elizabeth’s death is of course chief among the reasons I intend to challenge him."
"It is dull, always keeping up the pretense of being good." Buck paused. "But you were never one to lose sight of a goal."
"I mean really, how many poor people can New York possibly hold? And don’t they ever get sick of turkey?"
"I’m sorry to have made you think about Miss Holland again," Percival said haltingly as Diana pulled him to the side of the hole along the pond’s edge.
"Lizzy!" Her heart seized, but when she looked up she saw Will, her Will, trotting around her on the old dappled horse that he had bought in Lancaster.
"We have fun." Teddy’s eyes shifted and a memory passed in them. "We’ll have a dinner at Sherry’s, or maybe a hunting party up in Tuxedo."
"You don’t just throw a person through a crack in the ice," said Mrs. Edward Holland, who was born Louisa Gansevoort.
"I was wondering, Mr. Schoonmaker, when I might again have the pleasure of visiting your greenhouse."
"But you can’t think that anymore. No matter what pretty things I said to you, you must know now that they can never come to…fruition."
"It’s not Penelope. It’s not any other girl. But it would be wrong. You might think you wouldn’t care about the impropriety now, but I was your sister’s fiancé."
"Men at the opera are always promiscuous with their visiting of other people’s boxes. It is one of the things that make such evenings tolerable." - Maeve De Jong, Love and Other Follies of the Great Families of Old New York
"With all the extra work this made for Claire, Diana had heroically relieved her of any extraneous cosseting duties."
"She just says that she can’t leave the bed. I think you had better go now."
"Of all the misfortunes that seem to have befallen the Holland family as of late, no rumor has stuck so painfully as the one that Miss Elizabeth is alive and being held by some nefarious cabal or other, which some ladies might view as a fate worse than death."
"It is not unheard of for bachelor twosomes to keep one or more young ladies up in the air for years and then wed titled British girls with fine houses and deficient bank accounts whom no one has ever seen before." - Mrs. L. A. M. Breckinridge, The Laws of Being in Well-Mannered Circles
"To those who say it is irresponsible to spread rumors of Elizabeth Holland’s possible continued existence on this earth, we say it is irresponsible to categorically deny them."
"She was realizing for the first time in her life what agony it was to experience such unquiet beneath an impeccable veneer."
"What Will said was true, but it did little to comfort her, because the question that had interrupted her sleep the night before was not how soon she could be with her family, but what she could do for them once she arrived."
"Her family needed money now, or preferably yesterday."
"She would feel better, she told herself, once it was out of her hands and she had its worth in bills."
"If she plans to live a long time in society, a girl cannot be too careful which streets she strolls upon and in whose homes she is a guest."
"Order the firewood." "But they said they won’t defer payment any longer and that—" "Tell them we shall pay on delivery. When I get back I will have money for them…."
"She was imagining Henry, reading about her with his friend, ideally turning purple with rage and then, perhaps, challenging Teddy to a duel."
"It is common knowledge that at every dinner party ever given since the dawn of time, the guests have been sat such that the sexes alternate: male, female, male, female, etc."
"She had dressed for triumph in a garment of gossamer, which framed her bustline in filmy layers."
"Don’t nights like these make you miss Elizabeth so?" Henry shifted his jaw and appeared to consider how best to answer this. "It’s not nights like these that do it."
"The elements that make an ideal bride are manifold: her looks, her manners, her father’s money, her mother’s people all play a part."
"Good girls hold their heads high by daylight, Their grace and their virtue soaring with kites, While bad girls slink along in their shame— Everyone stares at them, everyone blames."
"Mr. Cairns, please, there is no need for you to explain yourself. I will have the maid make up a bed for you. In the meantime, go into the drawing room."
"Property has ever been a fluid concept—just ask the wife of the Wall Street speculator who writes her party invitations on Marie Antoinette’s escritoire."
"Of course a girl may have multiple beaux, but she should not appear to have too many and should be careful what she promises them."
"Being seen with divorcées like Mrs. Carr is worse than having no friends at all."
"It felt like a whole bouquet of flowers opening in the light."
"I would like to take you to Paris… is where every good thing happened to me."
"No man ever believes his depiction in the press to be accurate."
"The value of secrets is ever fluctuating, although ladies who have been in society for a long time learn that a secret kept can be worth more than a secret told."
"I am Elizabeth. It’s Christmas Eve and I’m Elizabeth and I’m not dead—that was all a kind of mistake."
"I don’t want you to pay me back, my dear."
"But consider a minute, Henry, how preferable it would be to marry a girl everyone wants to see you with already—how lovely and gay, how glittering and fine."
"Grandes dames do not let go of their grudges willingly; I have known some to cherish a resentment for twenty years or more, against their rival social arbiters but also against their own sisters and children. Such is their privilege, though there are those of us who wake up on Christmas morning hoping that this year it will be a day of reunion." —MRS. L. A. M. BRECKINRIDGE, THE LAWS OF BEING IN WELL-MANNERED CIRCLES
"I love you," he said. "I love you," she answered.
"You must not stand on ceremony with me, who as you know has come to love your family as my own."
"It is by now well known that William S. Schoonmaker wants to run for mayor, although he has thus far based his candidacy on little more than the unfortunate loss of his only son’s fiancée."
"Oh thank God, thank God, thank God," she repeated over and again.
"If anyone knows any reason why this man and woman should not be wed, let them speak now or forever hold their peace…"
"The announcement this morning, in a one-line item in the World, that Miss Penelope Hayes is engaged to be married to Mr. Henry Schoonmaker is a lovely bit of news."
"We always celebrate a white Christmas at the Holland house. You can print that if you like."
"Did you ever think you’d see me in your parlor?"
"Elizabeth, she’s alive!" Diana said then, waving her hands as though the illogical nature of the event had just occurred to her.
"It’s all too wild, Lizzie. I don’t know where you got the idea that you can just do as you please."
"Elizabeth Adora Holland has been discovered alive. It seems that she was kidnapped by a former coachman of the socialite’s family."
"Then we’re going to get him back for you," Elizabeth whispered as she bent to fully return her younger sister’s embrace.