A Daughter of To-Day

Individually a large number of Royal Academicians pronounced John Kendal's work impertinent, if not insulting, meaningless, affected, or flippant. Collectively, with a corporate...

"Janet," said Lawrence Cardiff a week later at breakfast, "the Halifaxes have decided upon their American tour. I saw Lady Halifax last night and she tells me they sail on the t...

"_Pas mal, parbleu!_" Lucien remarked, with pursed-out lips, running his fingers through his shock of coarse hair, and reflectively scratching the top of his big head as he step...

"Leslie." said Mrs. Bell, making the unnecessary feminine twist to get a view of her back hair from the mirror with a hand-glass, "aren't you _delighted?_ Try to be candid with...

Three days later a note from Miss Cardiff in Kensington Square to Miss Bell in Essex Court, Fleet Street, came back unopened. A slanting line in very violet ink along the top re...

"Three months more," Elfrida Bell said to herself next morning, in the act of boiling an egg over a tiny kerosene stove in the cupboard that served her as a kitchen, "and I will...

Kendal hardly admitted to himself that his acquaintance with Elfrida had gone beyond the point of impartial observation. The proof of its impartiality, if he had thought of seek...

It was Arthur Rattray who generally did the art criticism for the _Decade_, and when a temporary indisposition interfered between Mr. Rattray and this duty early in May, he had...

"To-day, remember. You promised that I should see it to-day," Elfrida reminded Kendal, dropping instantly into the pose they had jointly decided on. "I know I'm late, but you wi...

"Miss Cardiff's in the lib'ry, sir," said the housemaid, opening, the door for Kendal next morning with a smile which he did not find too broadly sympathetic. He went up the sta...

If Lucien had examined Miss Bell's work during the week of her experiment with Anglo-Parisian journalism, he would have observed that it grew gradually worse as the days went on...

Kendal mounted to Elfrida's _appartement_ in the Rue Porte Royale to verify the intimation of her departure, or happily to forestall its execution the morning after her note rea...

Lady Halifax and her daughter had met Miss Bell several times at the Cardiffs', in a casual way, before it occurred to either of them to take any sort of advantage of the acquai...

Miss Kimpsey dropped into an arm-chair in Mrs. Leslie Bell's drawing-room and crossed her small dusty feet before her while she waited for Mrs. Leslie Bell. Sitting there, think...

out. As Janet came in a breeze wavered through and lifted the fluffy hair about her visitor's forehead, and the scent of the growing things in the little square came with it int...

Before he had been back in Norway a week Kendal felt his perturbation with regard to Elfrida remarkably quieted and soothed. It seemed to him, in the long hours while he fished...

"Daddy," Janet said to her father a few days after their return to town; "I've been thinking that we might--that you might--be of use in helping Frida to place something somewhe...

"Yes," Miss Kimpsey returned. "It's a great treat--it's a _very_ great treat. Everything surpasses my expectations, everything is older and blacker and more interesting than I l...

Elfrida spent five weeks with the Peach Blossom Company on their provincial tour, and in the end the manager was sorry to lose her. He was under the impression that she had join...

I have mentioned that Miss Bell had looked considerations of sentiment very full in the face at an age when she might have been expected to be blushing and quivering before them...

Even in view of her popular magazine articles and her literary name Janet's novel was a surprising success. There is no reason why we should follow the example of all the London...

There was a scraping and a stumbling sound in the second floor front bedroom of Mrs. Jordan's lodgings in a by-way of Fleet Street, at two o'clock in the morning. It came up to...

Miss Bell arose late the next morning, which was not unusual. Mrs. Jordan had knocked three times vainly, and then left the young lady's chop and coffee outside the door on the...

John Kendal had turned the key upon his dusty work-room in Bryanston Street among the first of those who, according to the papers, depopulated London in July. He had an old enga...

"Oh but--but," cried Elfrida, tragic-eyed, "you don't understand, my friend. And these pretences of mine are unendurable--I won't make another. This is the real reason why I can...

Mr. Rattray's proposal occurred as soon after the close of the season as he was able to find time to devote the amount of attention to it which he felt it required. He put it of...

The weather had cleared to a compromise. The dome of St. Paul's swelled dimly out of the fog as Elfrida turned into Fleet Street, and the railway bridge that hangs over the head...

At three o'clock, an hour before he expected the Cardiffs, John Kendal ran up the stairs to his studio. The door stood ajar, and with a jealous sense of his possession within, h...

Kendal, as the door closed behind Elfrida on the afternoon of her last sitting, shutting him in with himself and the portrait on the easel, and the revelation she had made, did...

Shortly afterward Elfrida read Mr. Pater's "Marius," with what she herself called, somewhat extravagantly, a "hungry and hopeless" delight. I cannot say that this Oxonian's tend...

John Kendal had only one theory that was not received with respect by the men at Lucien's. They quoted it as often as other things he said, but always in a spirit of derision, w...

July thickened down upon London. The society papers announced that with the exception of the few unfortunate gentlemen who were compelled to stay and look after their constituen...

In the week that followed Janet Cardiff's visit to Elfrida's attic, these two young women went through a curious reapproachment. At every step it was tentative, but at every ste...

If John Kendal had been an on-looker at the little episode of Lady Halifax's drawing-room in Paris six months earlier it would have filled him with the purest, amusement. He wou...

is a thousand times more difficult than any in the _repertoire_. Can't you understand?" she appealed. "You are horribly unresponsive. We won't talk of it any longer." she added,...

March brought John Kendal back to town with a few Devonshire studies and a kindling discontent with the three subjects he had in hand for the May exhibitions. It spread over eve...

Janet Cardiff, running downstairs to the drawing-room from the top story of the house in Kensington Square with the knowledge that a new American girl, who wrote very clever thi...