My pretensions to Louise are founded on ties far above your power to controvert or forbid!
"The Mysterious Wanderer, Vol. I"
Sophia Reeve
The conversation continued for a considerable time longer, chiefly on the same subject; the wily Priest, while pretending to combat, often encouraging the plans of the Marchioness, by advancing arguments against them which he allowed her easily to controvert.
"The Prime Minister"
W.H.G. Kingston
And now that he might tell his story and find no one to controvert it-how he came to claim his wife and child, and found no child, but the lover by the wife's side; was attacked, defended himself, struck right and left, and thus did the deed-she survives, by miracle, to confute him, to condemn him, and worst of all, to forgive him."
"A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.)"
Mrs. Sutherland Orr