Sons of Fire, Volume III by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Geoffrey Wornock went back to Discombe, and his mother read failure and mortification in his gloomy countenance; but he vouchsafed no confidence. He was not sullen or unkind. He lived; and that was about as much as could be said of him. The fiddles, which were to him as cherished friends, lay mute in their cases. He seemed to regard that spacious music-room with its lofty ceiling and noble capacity for sound, as the captive lion regards his cage -- a place in which to roam about, and pace to and fro, restless, miserable, unsatisfied. He did not complain, and his mother dared not attempt to console. Once she pressed his hand and whispered "patience; " but he only shook his head fretfully, and walked out of the room.

"Patience! yes," he muttered to himself. "I could be patient, as patient as Jacob when he waited for Rachel -- if I were sure she loved me. But I have begun to doubt even that. Oh, if she knew what love meant, she would have rushed into my arms. She would have swooned upon my breast in the shock of that meeting; but she sat prim and quiet, only a little pale and tearful, while I was shaken by a tempest of passion. She is capable of no more than a schoolgirl's love -- held in check by the pettiest restraints of good manners and the world's opinion -- and she has hardly decided whether that feeble flame burns for me or for Allan."