An Ambitious Woman: A Novel

"No, no," said Claire, with a clouded face and a little wave of the hand, "it has nothing to do with either of those women. It is" ... here she paused, and her breath came quick...

"Delightful!" exclaimed Mrs. Diggs, on learning this occurrence from Claire herself, about a half hour later. "That visit, from those two women, has an enormous meaning. How sor...

Certain new tasks occupied Claire. She quickly performed them. Her administrative faculty now showed itself in clear and striking relief. Her penurious past had taught her unfor...

I mean to go abroad, very secretly, after the sale of certain property and chattels shall have put me in possession of the needed funds. It will be a flight--and a flight from m...

Claire had a fanciful thought, now, as she walked along the hard macadamized road which the incessant trains of funerals took toward Calvary, that Blissville, seen so distantly...

Claire's spirits seemed to rise as the decorous yet lavish banquet proceeded. Her laugh now and then rang out clear and sweet, while she addressed this or that lady, at various...

Sophia had always felt a liking for the yellow-eyebrowed young gentleman; they were the firmest of friends. The coming of Claire appeared to relieve her from the responsibility...

Claire did not like this at all. But she would not have shown a trace of chagrin, just then, for a heavy reward. She smiled, knowing how sweet her smile was, and promptly answered:

The small room where the trio sat was void of any real cheer. A pygmy stove, at one side of it, stood fuel-choked and nearly florid in hue. From this a strong volume of heat eng...

"Did I say it?" returned Claire. She put one hand to her forehead. "I--I must have spoken aloud without knowing it." ... Immediately afterward she crossed the room, going very c...

While Claire's reflections, nervous and fitful, took by degrees some such shape as this, she found a desperate, yearning pleasure in the hope that she might still drink the _vin...

"The words which you chose to address to me last night have permanently ended our acquaintance. As a gentleman to a gentlewoman, you were impolite. As a man to a woman, you were...

Claire would not speak. She was very frightened, as before has been recorded: she seemed to see, between the gloomy interspaces of the lamps, a phantasmal semblance of her fathe...

"Everything is tiresome, I suppose," she said, "if there is too great a supply of it. For my own part, I think that I like the conventionalities, as they are called. I haven't s...

Mrs. Lee went to the dinner in a truly marvelous gown. It was some curious blending of crimson and black silks, that made her look sombrely clad in one attitude and luridly clad...

"He did!" exclaimed her friend. "Your complexion tells me so! Everything is explained now. You refused Beverley. Yes, my dear, you refused him. And she somehow got wind of it. P...

Mrs. Diggs kissed her. "Claire," she said, "the more I see of you, the more you astonish me. I thought everything was lost, and how splendidly you turned the tables! Ah, my dear...

The mind of James MacNab was dull and sluggish. But he had seen a way of perhaps securing for himself the undivided attention of Josie. He did not wait for the latter to sanctio...

Meanwhile the halcyon promise of bettered fortunes had induced Twining to secure easier quarters. For several months he set his household gods within apartments on the second fl...

A slight further lapse of days brought grand results for Claire. She was legally the owner of the charming little house in which she dwelt; she had her maid, obsequiously attend...

This exceptional person was Mr. Beverley Thurston, whom we have already heard Sophia mention as having selected the volumes of her mother's library. He was a man about forty yea...

"I think her abominable," replied Thurston. "Her affectations irritate and depress me. They appear to grow with age, too. She behaved more like a contortionist than ever, to-nig...

Claire could hardly endure the attentions of Brady. She was civil to him because of her two hostesses, whose perception in all matters of social degree seemed hopelessly obtuse....

Her reddish-hazel eyes, that showed so little white as to look like two large beads of clouded amber, and were fringed with scant lashes of lighter red, kept up a persistent scr...

"I was mos' sure '_twas_ you, Miss Twining," said the new-comer, holding out a hand to Claire, "so I run a little further up the hill, jus' to make reel _certain_ sure."

Thurston went on as if there had been no interruption. "But if I tell you the plain truth, I don't doubt you will think me hard. I will tell it because you need it. You are stil...

"Wait, if you please," said Claire, with demure toleration, as though a bulwark of proof made this skeptic assault endurable. "Her husband's name, in the first place, is not _si...

But he was very civil, notwithstanding his grandeur. He told Claire, in a rich voice that would have deepened her veneration if it had not been blent with a valiant North-of-Ire...

Produced by Fulvia Hughes, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The...

"Herbert," she faltered.... "Herbert, I--I never knew till now that you could be so grand and strong! What kept me from loving you was your own love for _me_. It seemed to make...

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