The Parisians, Book IX by Edward Bulwer-lytton

It needs no length of words to inform thee, my intelligent reader, be thou man or woman -- but more especially woman -- of the consequences following each other, as wave follows wave in a tide, that resulted from the interview with which my last chapter closed. Gustave is removed to his parents' house; he remains for weeks confined within doors, or, on sunny days, takes an hour or so in his own carriage, drawn by the horse bought from Rochebriant, into by-roads remote from the fashionable world; Isaura visits his mother, liking, respecting, influenced by her more and more; in those visits she sits beside the sofa on which Rameau reclines. Gradually, gently -- more and more by his mother's lips -- is impressed on her the belief that it is in her power to save a human life, and to animate its career towards those goals which are never based wholly upon earth in the earnest eyes of genius, or perhaps in the yet more upward vision of pure-souled believing woman.

And Gustave himself, as he passes through the slow stages of convalescence, seems so gratefully to ascribe to her every step in his progress -- seems so gently softened in character -- seems so refined from the old affectations, so ennobled above the old cynicism -- and, above all, so needing her presence, so sunless without it, that -- well, need I finish the sentence? -- the reader will complete what I leave unsaid.