Sons of Fire, Volume II by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

"It would never do. ' Those words of Martha's -- so earnestly spoken by the kind soul who cared for me almost as tenderly as a mother cares for her own -- haunted me all through the rapid run to Cambridge, walked the quadrangles of Trinity with me, tramped the Trumpington Road upon my shoulders, like that black care which sits behind the traveller. 'It would never do. ' No need to ask my good Martha for the meaning of that emphatic assertion. I knew what shape her thoughts had taken as she watched me sitting by the little square piano -- the old, old piano, with such a thin, tinkling sound -- listening to that seraphic voice, and looking at that delicate profile and exquisite colouring of faintly flushed cheek, lifted eye, and shadowy hair. My old nurse had surprised my secret almost before I knew it myself; but, by the time I was back in my shabby ground-floor sitting-room at Trinity, I knew as well as Martha knew that I had let myself fall deep in love with a girl whom I could never marry with my mother's approbation. I might take my own way in life and marry the girl I loved; but to do so would be to forfeit my mother's affection, to make myself an outcast from her house.

"I know what kind of a lady your mother is,' said Martha, in her valedictory address.