surface-brutality

Updated: June 26, 2025

There was something hidden, beyond a doubt, under the mere surface-brutality of the words which her husband had just addressed to her. There was some lurking insult beneath them, of which I was wholly ignorant, but which had left the mark of its profanation so plainly on her face that even a stranger might have seen it. The Count, who was no stranger, saw it as distinctly as I did.

Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White