Every woman I see leaves his office with a beatific smile on her face, as if she was in the throes of a grand passion.

Because, barring the case of a grand passion built up stage by stage in early youth, a woman will not love a fool for long.

In that book, which pokes fun at the early-19th-century passion for Gothic fiction, a young heroine named Catherine becomes convinced that dark secrets lurk in the grand house she's visiting.