An Ambitious Man

THE congregation of St Blank’s Church was rendered sad and solicitous by learning that its rector was on the eve of nervous prostration, and that his physician had ordered a cha...

UP in the loft of St Blank’s Church the young organist had been practising the whole morning. People paused on the street to listen to the glorious sounds, and were thrilled by...

The woman who thinks love is all ideality is more liable to follow into undreamed-of chasms than she who, through the complexity of her own emotions, realises its grosser elements.

ONE of the greatest factors in the preservation of the Baroness’s beauty had been her ability to sleep under all conditions. The woman who can and does sleep eight or nine hours...

Only once before had the tale passed her lips; then her listener was Horace Irving; and his only comment was to take her in his arms and place the kiss of betrothal on her lips....

TWO weeks later the organ loft of St Blank’s Church was occupied by a stranger. For a few hours the Baroness felt a wild hope in her heart that Miss Irving had been sent away.

Preston was not one of those young men who find pastime in flirtations with nursery maids or kitchen girls. The very thought of it offended his good taste. Once, in listening to...

JOY IRVING had come to Beryngford at the time when the discoveries of the quarries caused that village to spring into sudden prominence as a growing city. Newspaper accounts of...

Religious observance was only an implement of social warfare with her. Wherever her lot was cast, she made it her business to discover which church the fashionable people of the...

WHILE Joy battled with her sorrow during the days following Preston Cheney’s burial, she woke to the consciousness that her history was known in Beryngford. The indescribable ch...

PRESTON CHENEY walked briskly down the street after he left his fiancée, his steps directed toward the Palace. It was seven o’clock, and he knew the Baroness would be at home.

Many of his early hopes and desires had been realised during these years. He had attained to high political positions; and honour and wealth were his to enjoy. Yet Senator Chene...

“Should maternity come to her, she would doubtless be very much improved in health afterward,” the doctor said, and Mabel, remembering how true a similar prediction proved in he...

THE rector of St Blank’s Church dined at the Cheney table or drove in the Cheney establishment every week, beside which there were always one or two confidential chats with the...

PRESTON CHENEY turned as he ran down the steps of a handsome house on “The Boulevard,” waving a second adieu to a young woman framed between the lace curtains of the window. The...

“I have come to tell you an unpleasant story,” she said—“a painful and revolting story, the early chapters of which were written years ago, but the sequel has only just been mad...

PRESTON CHENEY conceived such a strong, earnest liking for the young clergyman whom he met under his own roof during one of his visits home, that he fell into the habit of atten...

“BARONESS BROWN” was a distinctive figure in Beryngford. She came to the place from foreign parts some three years before the arrival of Preston Cheney, and brought servants, ca...

“It is Arthur’s message, appointing a time and place for our meeting,” she said to herself. “How long ago that strange interview with him seems!—yet it was only yesterday. How u...

EVER since early girlhood Joy Irving had formed a habit of jotting down in black and white her own ideas regarding any book, painting, concert, conversation or sermon, which int...

WHATEVER hope of escape from his self-imposed bondage Preston Cheney had entertained when he began the note to his fiancée which the Baroness had read, completely vanished durin...