to take leave

• “She hastened then to take leave of Sir Hugh, whom Mr. Tyrold had prepared for her departure; but, at the door of his apartment, she encountered Edgar.”

  Camilla: or, A Picture of Youth

• “The Coolidges called yesterday to take leave and beg an autograph.”

  New Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle

• “He went up to Madame Grandmaison to take leave of her.”

  Death of a Harbormaster

• “As for me I should have stayed till they had turned me out; but my occupations and, above all things, my Concerto, which is impatiently waiting for its Finale, have compelled me to take leave of this Paradise.”

  Frederic Chopin as a Man and Musician

• “I was grieved to take leave of Champlost, which is a charming place, of which I am very fond, where I shall, in all human probability, never stay again, though I shall constantly walk over there of a morning, and have promised M — to keep up my practice of dining with her every Monday, as long as I remain in America.”

  Further Records, 1848-1883: A Series of Letters

• “Wives were there to take leave of their husbands, and husbands of their wives, children of their parents, brothers and sisters shaking hands perhaps for the last time, friends parting with friends, and the tenderest ties of humanity sundered at the single bid of the inhuman slave-broker before them.”

  Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton

• “On the Saturday before Ascension day (which Saturday is the morrow of the day on which we were set free), the Count of Flanders, and the Count of Soissons, came to take leave of the King, together with many of the other rich men who had been imprisoned in the galleys.”

  The Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville

• “When I went down to Isé to be present as the messenger of the King at the ceremony 1 of installing the virgin in charge of the shrine, I wanted to come back in the early dawn, so went to take leave of the Princess [whose installation had just taken place] in a moon-bright night after many days 'snow, half shrinking to think of my journey.”

  Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

• “The passage in which Kate Woodward, thinking that she will die, tries to take leave of the lad she loves, still brings tears to my eyes when I read it.”

  Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

• “I continued to see my friends: I went to take leave of the ambassador from Spain, who received me well, and of the Comte de Finochietti, minister from Naples, whom I did not find at home.”

  The Confessions of J J Rousseau

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