A Widow's Tale, and Other Stories

It was morning, and all the usual business was well begun; the cows were out in their pasture on the hillside; the chickens about the close vicinity of the house; nothing was au...

Elizabeth Murray was very busy about her poultry all the height of the summer. She had so many broods of chickens to look after that she scarcely knew how to turn. With all her...

Lily was very penitent while her mother talked to her, but after Elizabeth went away her seriousness relaxed. What harm had she done, after all? She had not encouraged any one,...

"What is the matter?" said calmly a smooth and even voice. Mary was almost beside herself. The servants had all gone into the ruins with Charley Landale at their head to help, a...

That night late there came a note by the last post--that post which sometimes adds horrors to the night in London, with missives which interfere hopelessly with the quiet of the...

Perhaps he was not so kind as he ought to have been to his mother. At sixteen how can it be expected that a boy could enter into a woman's feelings and put himself in her place?...

It is needless to add that Claire did not say a word in remonstrance or objection. She was startled and unprepared for such summary measures. And yet she said to herself that sh...

"What has happened? Is she ill? Has she hurt herself? Has there been an accident?" demanded John, a tall lad of sixteen, dressed, like the first speaker, in country clothes of F...

It would not be easy to find a more difficult position than that in which Mademoiselle now found herself. She had just put into the post-box a letter to the man who came up at t...

It was not a love marriage. The man, indeed, had been universally described as "very much in love," but the girl was not by any one supposed to be in that desirable condition. S...

Thus John found himself involved in a duel to the death, as it seemed, with an intelligence probably quicker than his own, and with many advantages over him, as he speedily real...

The coach was crawling softly up the hill. In daylight half of the passengers would have walked up the ascent which was within a short distance of Duntrum, but they were all ben...

John Percival was a nephew of a banker in Edinburgh, destined from his childhood to the service of the bank--which was considered by all the family the greatest good luck that c...

When John returned to his rooms, carrying his strange spoils with him, he found on his table an invitation. For the last week or two his invitations had been few. This one had b...

Peter Oliphant went into the great hall of Kellie Castle with very mingled feelings. Though he had lived all his life almost within sight of the home of his race, he had never c...

When he reviewed afterwards, in quietness, the bewildering impressions of that night, John said to himself that it was the attitude of Miss Wamphrey which struck him before he h...

She was not altogether French, notwithstanding her name: indeed her nationality was the most dubious thing in the world, unless any assault was made upon either of the countries...

There were excuses for him; he had been interrupted, and he had come back to have it out, to tell his tale, to make his declaration. Mrs Glynn, who was quite cool and impartial,...

Abel fled from the presence of those who seemed to him his enemies and persecutors in a state of mind impossible to describe. The excitement in him had risen beyond the bounds o...

"Oh, Mr Rushton, you don't know what mother is. She says it's for my good. They always think it is for our good when they go against us. She says I'd be a deal better with a hou...

It was not very long after this evening walk that John found himself in a company of the very _élite_ of his college. They knew themselves to be the _élite_, and that was enough...

The essay, I need not say, on which John laboured, inking himself body and soul, was not by any means finished at one sitting. He toiled at it during the whole of the first week...

A few days afterwards, Charley Landale and his friend went to the Castle by special invitation to see the old squire's books and antiquities, and himself. "Don't stay talking to...

"My friend Pate," said Sir John Low, "I cannot think that you have so little sense--a young man of havins, as I have ever kent you--as to oppose my Lord Oliphant in his lawfu' r...

There is nothing in the world, as all the world knows, that can go on for any time at a given point without developments, and those probably of an unforeseen sort, especially no...

One summer evening Mademoiselle was seated in her schoolroom as usual, which was a very pretty room though at the top of the house, a room with a balcony overlooking the garden,...

John Rushton's early life had been so peculiar that it was not wonderful if he found himself very much at sea when he was first plunged into the curious conventional life of an...

Lily had met the young squire many times already in the Lover's Lane. The back-door of Miss Prentice's little house was near of access, and the girl had been too much dazzled by...

The house of Over-Kellie had not the dignity of the Castle; yet the living-room into which Peter strayed with absent eyes, flinging himself down on an oak bench beside the long...

The Murrays of Overbeck, in the parish of Waterdale, among the hills, were nothing but a family of peasants. Nevertheless they were the cause of so much trouble and confusion th...

Claire de Castel-Sombre reached her room in a condition of mind in which, though this was quite unusual, she forgot altogether that she was Mademoiselle and became herself, a wo...

Roger and Lily left the cottage almost immediately on their extraordinary journey. All that they had was the money which he had got before he started, a considerable sum which h...

It was not at once remarked in the Square that Mr Charles Wargrave had changed his habits in respect to his visits there,--that he came in the afternoon and at the hour of lunch...

It was rather a relief to them all when the father went away again. They did not say so indeed in so many words, still keeping up the amiable domestic fiction that the house was...

Mrs Wargrave made next morning a very pretty little speech of mingled gratitude and apology to Mademoiselle. "I can't imagine," she said, "what made me so silly as to faint last...

Thinking, thinking all the long night through did not seem to do poor Nelly any good. She had arrived at home so exhausted in mind and body, so chilled to the heart, that she wa...

Ten years! It is a very long time in a life. It makes a young man middle-aged, and a middle-aged man old. It takes away the bloom of youth, and the ignorance of the most inexper...

Sir Walter Oliphant of Kellie in Fife was a man who had grown old amid many perturbations of the State and of the house. In Mary's stormy and troubled day he had been, as many w...

His mother was in bed and asleep when Horace returned from his play--or at least so he thought. He opened her door and found the room dark, and said, "Are you asleep, mamma?" an...

She woke suddenly with the sense that somebody was by her, and found Horace seated by her bed. She had fallen asleep in the brightness of the morning, overcome with fatigue, and...

In Sir Walter's chamber, after that interview, there were many comings and goings. Sir John Low, as it was still the habit to call the curate, came every day, for the knight, in...

The Bamptons were expecting a visitor that very afternoon: which made it all the more indiscreet that young Fitzroy should stay so long practising those duets with May. It was a...

When Lily began her dressmaking in the Waterside village, her brother Abel had just attained the highest object of his ambition. He had become a fellow of his college, and thus...

News were brought to Over-Kellie only in the afternoon of the next day that the new heir, who had made so ungracious an entrance, was gone. It was brought by Neil Morison, in th...

They reached London in the dawn of the morning, when the blue day was coming in over the housetops, before the ordinary stir of the waking world had begun. Of course, at that ea...

"In a moment, Horace; in a moment." It could not be postponed any longer. She rose up slowly and looked at herself in the glass to see if it was written in her face. She had not...

There ensued after this a very dark time in the life of Peter Oliphant of Over-Kellie. When Jean found that not she, any more than the pony, could master Pate, she withdrew alto...

This is what Mrs Lycett-Landon and Milly said in chorus as the head of the house, with something which might have been a little embarrassment, announced a third visit to London...

Mr and Mrs Lycett-Landon were two middle-aged people in the fulness of life and prosperity. Though they belonged to the world of commerce, they were both well-born and well conn...

While this was going on, Sir Walter was sitting in his warm panelled chamber, pondering by the side of the fire. His old Castle, which was not one of the famous strongholds of t...

Mrs Brunton was not, I think, at all comfortable in her mind as she left her cousin's house. It had been in some sort a trial visit. She had not gone anywhere, or seen anybody,...

The Lycett-Landons went home to the Grove that night. Horace asked his mother no questions. He helped her to lift up and place upon a sofa the visitor whose strength had failed...

Mrs Brunton woke next morning with an aching head and a confused mind, not knowing for a moment what had happened to her. Was it a nightmare? a dreadful dream? She had not slept...

It is not often in life that a woman is brought to such an emergency without warning, without time for preparation. She did nothing at all at first, and felt capable of nothing...

When Mrs Brunton's bonnet with the long veil was taken off, and her long cloak, which was half covered with crape, she presented a very agreeable figure in a well-fitting dress,...

Miss Bampton's sentiments during this sudden change of circumstances were more remarkable than those of May, for she was as much dismayed and startled as her sister, and much mo...

The children had been but a week at the house of Mrs Evans, Nelly's sister, when a letter arrived, first sent to Haven Green, then by various stages to their present habitation,...

Bampton-Leigh felt very blank and vacant when both these people who had troubled its peace went away. Had Nelly gone alone and Mr Fitzroy remained, it is possible that there mig...

It is astonishing how many things can be done in sudden excitement and passion which could not be possible under any other circumstances. Janey was by nature a shy girl and easi...

Mrs Lycett-Landon drove off through the crowded City streets in a curious trace of excited feeling. She had a sense that something was going to happen to her; but how this was s...