Explore "A Rogue's Tragedy" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Molly Bramble was, and had always been, within the pale of her social limitations, a perfectly good girl, sweet, modest and wholesome. Child of a class rather prone, in its maternal admonitions, to awaken a precocious curiosity as to the signs and indications which distinguish the bad male fruit from the good, to put its virgins on their guard against suggestion by suggesting, she was even a little remarkable for her artless pudency. As maid and milkmaid she had invited no offence, guarded her bosom from so little as a sun-ray's wanton kissing, cherished her sweet honour, jealously but simply, within the bounds her state prescribed.
But she had had no arts to negotiate it beyond these, and, when the ordeal came, and she heard it called a lovely superstition by lips adorable in seduction, her innocence must yield it, for the archaism it was pronounced, to that bright masterful intelligence.