Magdalen! It was a strange name to have given her? Strange indeed; and yet, chosen under no extraordinary circumstances. The name had been borne by one of Mr Vanstone’s sisters, who had died in early youth; and, in affectionate remembrance of her, he had called his second daughter by it…
Magdalen! Surely, the grand old Bible name – suggestive of a sad and sombre dignity; recalling, in its first association, mournful ideas of penitence and seclusion – had been here, as events had turned out, inappropriately bestowed?
(Wilkie Collins, No Name, 1862)
