How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue.
– Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 50. The narrator warns of the dangers involved in allowing passions overrule virtue. This refers to Lydia’s whirlwind affair with George Wickham when the boy-crazy fifteen-year-old elopes with the military officer to go to Gretna Green. This is a place in Scotland where fast weddings were performed for eloping couples. But it turns out that the pair don’t go there and instead went to a love nest in London.