The following graph and word clouds show which words George Talboys uses most frequently in the novel. This research has been carried out on Voyant-tools.org, which is a tool that reads and analyzes digital texts, and on Wordclouds.com, a tool for creating word clouds. In order to simplify the search on Voyant, each chapter has been assigned a number. The following table shows the correspondence between the chapters and the numbers on the abscissa.

The graph and the word clouds show that darling is one of the words George Talboys uses the most. In fact, it appears sixteen times in his speech. However, a closer look at figure 2 reveals that it starts decreasing in frequency after chapter V, that is to say after George finds out his wife is dead. Then it gradually but quickly disappears after chapter VI, never to be uttered again. But darling is only one of the words George uses to refer to Helen Talboys: also little, pretty, love, dear, girl and wife are very frequently used, as the following graph illustrates.

As figure 5 clearly shows, all the terms of endearment George Talboys uses for his wife at the beginning of the novel gradually decrease in frequency as it dawns on him that she has deceived him and lied to him; by the time he returns to England (chapter XL), he has altogether stopped referring to his wife by such terms.

On the contrary, as figure 6 shows, Bob, the nickname that George uses for his friend Robert Audley, is omnipresent in George’s speech; this proves how much Robert means to him.

Figure 7 has been created my merging figure 6 and figure 5 into one graph. This new graph compares and contrasts the frequencies of the words bob, darling, wife, girl and dear. Interestingly, it proves that at the beginning of the novel George holds both his friend Robert and his wife Helen in high regard. However, readers know that as the story progresses, his love for Helen gradually weakens, while his affection for Robert never wavers, as the graph in question shows.