was pretending that everything was old hat when it was all so new,
being forced to feign the kind of nonchalance
that only comes from a lifetime of knowing and taking for granted.
Lila was a quick study, and she knew how to keep up a front;
but behind the mask of disinterest, she took in everything.
She was a sponge, soaking up the words and customs,
training herself to see something once and be able to pretend
she’d seen it a dozen—a hundred—times before.
― V.E. Schwab, A Gathering of Shadows
Two ladies and a girl at a costume party, 1870s
High-res 4" x 5" @ 300 ppi JPEG without a watermark here.
Larger size available for licensing. Please inquire.
For personal use only. Not for resale. All digitized work by The Real Victorian is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Please cite RealVictorian.com as your source when sharing or publishing.