A Life For a Love: A Novel

When a die has been cast--cast irrevocably--as a rule there follows a calm. It is sometimes the calm of peace, sometimes that of despair; but there is always a stillness, effort...

"Yes, my darling," said Mr. Paget, two hours later; his arms were round his daughter, and her head was on his shoulder. "Oh, yes, my dear one, certainly, if you wish it."

Esther Helps still took charge of her father's house in Acacia Villas. She was still Esther Helps. Perhaps a more beautiful Esther than of old; a little steadier, too, a little...

Augusta Wyndham was pacing up and down the broad gravel walk which ran down the centre of the rectory garden in a state of great excitement. She was walking quickly, her hands c...

Esther longed to go to Acacia Villas during the week. She often felt on the point of asking Mrs. Wyndham to give her leave, but then again she felt afraid to raise suspicions; a...

"Strange," thought Esther. "I listened with all my might, and I could not hear anything except the usual barrel organs and German bands in the street. But she has heard somethin...

Valentine had got a blow. The first real great blow which had ever been dealt to her. It had a most curious effect. Instead of stunning or rendering her weak and incapable, it s...

"Yes," said Augusta Wyndham, "if there is a young man who suits me all round it's Mr. Carr. Yes," she said, standing very upright in her short skirts, with her hair in a tight p...

Esther was now seated in the easy-chair; Wyndham stood by the mantel-piece. He had got a shock, and that shock had given him strength, and a good deal of his old manner.

That was the universal opinion of the servants who worked for Valentine Wyndham. They never wanted to leave her, they never grumbled about her, nor thought her gentle orders har...

Valentine was delighted to have Lilias as her companion. She was in excellent spirits just now, and Lilias and she enjoyed going about together. They had adventures which please...

On Monday morning Wyndham returned to town. His father had strained a point to give his only son the season in London, and Gerald was paying part of the expenses by coaching one...

She was sitting in the sunny front parlor, the room which was known as the children's room at the rectory. An open letter lay on her dark winter dress; her sunny hair was piled...

Three years have passed away since she last appeared in this story; she is grown up now, somewhat lanky still, with rather fierce dark eyes, and a somewhat thin pronounced face....

At this period of her life Valentine was certainly not in the least in love with the man to whom she was engaged--she disliked caresses and what she was pleased to call honeyed...

Wyndham was standing with his back to the mantel-piece; Valentine's lovely picture was over his head. Her eyes, which were almost dancing with life, seemed to have something moc...

This was the very light and airy beginning of a friendship which was to ripen into serious and even appalling results. Wyndham was a man who found it very easy to make girls lik...

"Mrs. Wyndham wants some one who can be kind and sympathetic near her. Some one who can be tactful, and full of common-sense. Her nerves are greatly shaken. For instance she was...

A few days after the events related in the last chapter Mr. Paget asked his son-in-law to have a few minutes' private conversation with him. Once more the young man found himsel...

Some people concern themselves vey much with the mysteries of life, others take what good things fall into their way without question or wonder. These latter folk are not of a s...

At the sound of his voice the footman fell back as white as a sheet. Mr. Paget rose, walked over to him, took him by the shoulders, and pushed him out of the room. He locked the...

She left the room, tripping lightly upstairs in her neat nurse's dress. When she got to Wyndham's door and knocked gently for admission her heart, however, was beating so wildly...

The human face has been often spoken of as an index of the mind. There are people who boldly declare that they know a man by the height of his forehead, by the set of his eyes,...

Helps buttoned on his great coat, said a few words to one of the clerks, and stepped out into the foggy night. He hailed a passing omnibus, and in the course of half-an-hour fou...

Gerald Wyndham was not in the least like his rosy, fresh-looking sisters. He was tall and slenderly made, with very thick and rather light-brown hair, which stood up high over h...

"They cure the sick here, do they? But I will cure my husband myself. I know the way." She smiled. "Take me to him, Esther. How slow you are. Beloved Esther--I don't thank you--...

"I begin a letter to you under peculiarly afflicting circumstances. Your son-in-law, the favorite of every one on board, one of the nicest young gentlemen I have had the luck to...

The summer came early that year. The rectory was a charming place in the summer, and on this particular bright day in June one of the numerous school-feasts was in course of pre...

Esther Helps was certainly neither a prudent nor a careful young woman. She meant no harm, she would have shuddered at the thought of actual sin, but she was reckless, a little...

"Val, child, what are you humming under your breath?" said her father, suddenly rousing himself from his slumbers and looking into his daughter's pretty face. "Your voice is lik...

The house of Paget Brothers was never more flourishing than during the spring and summer of 18--. It was three years since the death of its junior partner, Gerald Wyndham, and t...

"I am sorry, Mr. Wyndham," said Captain Jellyby, "to have to offer you on your very first night on board my good ship very broken slumbers. We shall be lading with coals all nig...

Valentine really made an excellent housekeeper. Nobody expected it of her; her friends, the ladies, old and young, the girls, married or otherwise, who knew Valentine as they su...

Gerald had found his task most uncongenial. In the first place he was disappointed at not spending the evening with Valentine and Lilias. In the second the close proximity of su...

"How much time can you give me to-morrow?" she said. "I want to go out with you. I have been speaking to father, and he accedes to all our wishes--he will give us an income. He...

Valentine Wyndham had often said that no greater treasure of a nurse could be found than the one who came to her when little Gerald was a month old. When she saw Esther, however...

It was soon after this that Valentine Paget's world became electrified with the news of her engagement. Wyndham was congratulated on all sides, and those people who had hitherto...

At the end of a week the Wyndhams were settled in their new home, and Valentine began her duties as wife and housekeeper in earnest. She, too, was more or less impulsive, and be...

"Yes, Gerald--a favor! I like to grant favors. Is it that I must wear that soft white dress you like so much to-morrow evening? Or that I must sing no songs but the rectory song...

Wyndham was engaged to Valentine Paget very nearly a year before their wedding. One of the young lady's stipulations was that under no circumstances would she enter into the hol...

"I am not surprised at your loving your husband," she began. "Men like your husband are worth loving. They are loyal, true, and noble. They make the world a better place. Once y...

"Ah," he responded, rising from his seat, and going up to the younger man. "'Tis them as bears burdens knows how to pity. Thank the Lord there's compensation in all things. Now...

Valentine was sitting in her pretty drawing-room. It was dinner time, but she had not changed her dress. She was too young, too fresh, and unused to trouble, for it yet to leave...

Esther did not go out next morning. Cherry was surprised at this. Helps went off at his usual hour. Cherry noticed that he ate little or no breakfast; but Esther did not stir. S...

Wyndham before his engagement was one of the most boyish of men. All the sunshine, the petting, the warmth, the love, which encircled him as the prime favorite of many sisters a...

The time was July, and the roses were out in great profusion in the rectory garden. The garden was large, somewhat untidily kept, but it abounded in all sweet old-fashioned flow...

She was kneeling by his side. Now she put her arm round his neck, and looked into his face. Her beating, throbbing, exulting heart told her that her discovery of that day was ne...

On a certain evening about ten days after the events related in the last chapter, Valentine Paget and her father were seated together in the old library. Good-natured Mrs. Johns...

Lilias Wyndham never forgot that last Sunday with Gerald spent at Jewsbury-on-the-Wold. The day in itself was perfect, the air blew softly from the west, the sun shone in a near...

Mr. Paget was most careful that the full contents of the cable did not go to his daughter at Jewsbury-on-the-Wold. He read it three or four times, then he took up a telegraph fo...

The _Esperance_ was a well-made boat; she was about four thousand tons, with improved engines which went at great speed. She was a trading ship, one of the largest and most impo...

When the wandering minstrel, with his violin under his arm, left the neighborhood of Park-lane, he walked with a somewhat feeble and faltering step through Grosvenor-square and...