The Valley of Ghosts by Edgar Wallace

It was no exaggeration to say that since his uncle's death Arthur Wilmot had lived under a strain that he thought at times would drive him mad.

Neither his character nor his training fitted him for the ordeal through which he was passing. He had inherited from his mother, a highly strung, nervous woman, that weakness of resistance which had made a surrender to emotions of the moment seem natural and proper. Restraint, other than the restraint imposed by fear, he no more applied to the inclinations of maturity than he had to the tantrums of childhood. That Stella for one had not known him in his true character was entirely due to his confidence that the friendship between them would, in his own time, develop as he might direct. She did not know that their relationship had progressed on his side with the greatest caution. If in its earlier and longer period he had not given her the slightest hint that he was in love with her, it was because he had consciously avoided the compromising of his life. He thought he was acting 'fairly'. He told himself as much. He honestly believed that in the course of their relationship she had offered him certain opportunities for guiding their relationship into a closer one, and when he had at last decided that she was made for him, and he had, in carefully chosen words, explained his intentions, her prompt refusal came in the nature of a thunderbolt from a clear sky.