Your frontier ethics are so rawboned, Miss Edwards, as rough-hewn and clumsy as the log cabin in which you must have been raised. Mrs. Stanton's face… - M. K. Hobson

It was her own evil assumptions that had done her in. She hadn’t even considered the third possible explanation for his strange behavior—that he was a perfectly nice man, without an ounce of guile, just trying to be helpful. People helped people in California. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She’d only been in New York a few weeks, and already she was turning hard and suspicious.

“I wasn’t sure if we were still engaged.”
“After everything we’ve been through? After true love conquered all?” Emily shook her head. “Being dead had done nothing to alleviate your obtuseness, Mr. Stanton.”
“Being dead allowed me to learn the heart’s deepest secret,” he said. “That sometimes love—even true love—isn’t enough.”
”But it’s a start,” Emily said.

The obsessive rules of etiquette struck Emily as mean-spirited, like the old trick of tying someone’s shoelaces under the table. It was only fun if you liked watching people fall down.