A Fool in Spots

The New Yorker was there for the day, at the kind solicitation of the Major and his most estimable wife. Afternoon brought a rimming haze; the wind had hushed, and the thick, li...

“If you can’t afford the wife, then let the wife afford you,” began Frost’s logical reasoning. “You have brain, muscle and youth. Marry them to that necessary adjunct which you...

Willard Frost’s observations rang in Robert Milburn’s ear, not without effect, as he walked to his room that evening, albeit, his conscience refuted the arguments. He whiled awa...

They had gone to the country--to Kentucky. The wind seemed to blow out of all the heavens across the greening world. With what light touch it lifted the hazel, bent to earth at...

It happened that the very day after Robert’s return, he had accepted, for the first time in some months, one of the many invitations which Willard Frost had extended. He had usu...

The old home rose coldly gray ’gainst the darkness of a threatening sky. But yesterday the scene had been one of almost unearthly sweetness and placidity. Ideal summer seemed to...

Suddenly Mrs. McDowell remembered that this was the bold man of whom Cherokee had told her much; so she questioned her no more, for she was always tender and thoughtful of others.

It was true that Robert was dead--dead drunk, and to drink was his purpose in leaving Marrion at home. He had been held in check until he could not--he felt it was impossible--w...

That evening Robert did not go down town to dinner, but stayed at home, by way of doing penance. He sat in his room, reading; suddenly he threw aside the paper and said:

It was some months afterward. Cherokee, gowned in violet and gold, was on her way to the Chrysanthemum Show, where she felt sure of meeting some of her friends. She was walking...

In his fashionable apartments, Willard Frost walked back and forth in his loose dressing-gown. Rustling about the room, his softly slippered feet making no noise on the floor, h...

But her penitence was wrought in raindrops ringed with fragile gold--the tears that April sheds. Now vernal grace was complete; the only thing to do was to go out in it, to rejo...

Carriages, formed in double ranks by the police, lined the pavement of several blocks on ---- street, and from them alighted, as each carriage made a brief stop at the entrance,...

“Not unless that future’s arm can hold both of us, Cherokee, for you are still all I really want praise from--all I fear in the blaming. But, sweetheart, you have dropped me as...

“It is not at all serious, my dear madam,” the friend began, “but the truth is--” here he hesitated confusedly, he did not mean to tell her the truth at all; anything else but t...

The Major and his wife, who was the personification of lovable good nature, considered together, and graciously agreed to extend to Robert, for these two weeks, the hospitality...

“Robert, I must speak to you on a delicate subject. You are my friend, a man for whose interests I would all but give up my life,” and his mission flashed across the other’s mind.

It was a dull, wintry day; blank, ashen sky above--grassland, sere and stark, below. Weedy stubble wore shrouding of black; everything was still--so still, even the birds yet dr...

“Resounds the glad hollo, The pack scents the prey; Man and horse follow, Away, hark away! Away, never fearing, Ne’er slacken your pace-- What music so cheering As that of the c...

The air of the gray room grew close, oppressive to the spirit, and at the darkening window he arose from the desk. He put on his long rain-coat, and with a hollow, ominous sound...

Cherokee was sad; what wife is not who has a drunken husband? Drearily broke the winter days, and drearily fell the winter nights. One by one, she often watched the neighboring...

Now and again Cherokee kissed the roses with pangs of speechless pain. The fragrance that floated from their lips brought only anguish. To her, white roses must ever mean white...

“I must, I must; my nerves are all shattered. I will stop when I have won the laurels of art,” and he poured the fiery poison into the sugared glass.

It was the seventeenth of October--the wedding day at “Ashland.” Little ruffles of south wind blew out of a fair sky, breathing the air of simplicity into grandeur. Up among the...

“By Jove!” exclaimed Latham, “I wonder what’s up. There’s Robert Emmet Cooper, Fred Ryder, D. Kohler, and who is the one at the head of the table? Well, upon my word, it is Milb...

April, with her wreathed crook, was leading her glad flock about the hem of the city’s skirt, winding a golden mist away into the country’s lushways. Nature’s voice sounded: “Oh...

Frost was succeeding in bringing Robert Milburn into open disrepute. That he was, will appear from his statement of the case to a few friends who had accompanied him into the ba...

With the first mail that Marrion Latham received after reaching New York was a letter which bore the postmark of the small railway station in Kentucky from which he had lately d...

“I don’t know the date, but she will get one of the finest boys on earth. They will have this magnificent country home to spend their summers in, and that is such a blessing--th...

He entered the house unobserved, and went directly to his room, from which he did not emerge until the clock told him that the hour was eleven. He was going to leave; upon that...

It had blown hard in the night, but the wind had dropped at dawning, and now the rising sun tinted the cruel fringe of storm wrack as it dwindled into the west.

It had been some months since Cherokee and Marrion had met. But he still loved and was guarding her reputation. The little bit of treachery, villainy, or whatever Frost might ha...