Tipping The Velvet (VMC Designer Collection)

had that sensation again, that there had grown a lantern or a beacon inside me. I was sure that when she stepped upon the stage it would be like putting a match to the wick, and I would flare up, golden and incandescent but somehow painfully and shamefully bright; and my family and my beau would shrink away from me, appalled.

like my own. Like the freckles, it made her – not unremarkable, as I had feared to find her; but marvellously, achingly real. Hearing it, I understood at last my wildness of the past seven days. I thought, how queer it is! – and yet, how very ordinary: I am in love with you. Soon her face

pettishly.

garrulous

guile.

Sapphists

ribald

But children, he concluded, weren’t made to please their parents; and no father should expect to have his daughter at his side for ever … ‘In short, Nance, even was you going to the very devil himself, your mother and I would rather see you fly from us in joy, than stay with us in sorrow – and grow, maybe, to hate us, for keeping you from your fate

but I had learned too that not all its great variety was visible to the casual eye; that not all the pieces of the city sat together smoothly, or graciously, but rather rubbed and chafed and jostled one another, and overlapped;