An Old Man's Darling

"_Au contraire_," he answered, gaily, "it was only this evening that I was experiencing a like feeling. For instance, when I captured your skiff and set forth alone I was just d...

Colonel Carlyle keeps the peace for several days. He finds that he has overstepped the mark and that it will take careful management to regain his lost ground in his wife's rega...

Among all the radiant beauties that promenaded the beach and danced in the ball rooms at Long Branch, the young bride of Colonel Carlyle became immediately distinguished for her...

She had convalesced but slowly--too slowly, the physician said, for one of her former perfect health and fine constitution. But the weight of grief hung heavily upon her, paraly...

The gay, pleasure-loving Parisians were on the _qui vive_ for Mrs. Carlyle's masquerade ball, for it was everywhere conceded that her entertainments were the most _recherche_ an...

Colonel Carlyle was as deeply infatuated with Bonnibel Vere as the jealous Felise had declared him to be; but, as she had always asserted, he was very wily and cautious in his a...

The morning after the rejection of Colonel Carlyle, Bonnibel Vere sat alone in a pleasant little morning-room that was thrown out from the main residence as a wing. It was daint...

Bonnibel had never wept so wildly in all her life. It seemed to her that she would die of her grief as she lay panting and weeping in Leslie's tender arms.

But she was mistaken. Bonnibel neither screamed nor fainted. She sat like one dazed for a moment, her blue eyes riveted to the paper, and her face growing white as death, while...

When Bonnibel arrived in New York the day after her rencontre with the sibyl, she found her uncle's fine carriage in waiting for her at the depot. Mrs. Arnold, though she would...

The solemn words of the judge echo through the crowded court-room, and the sea of human faces turn curiously and with one accord towards the spot where the prisoner sits with hi...

Colonel Carlyle soon misses his heart's fair queen from the ball-room, and immediately the whole enchanting scene becomes a desert in his love-lorn eyes. He glances hither and t...

Mr. Arnold and his family, consisting only of his wife and step-daughter, Felise Herbert, were in their places at the table before Bonnibel came floating in, a vision of rosy, i...

Leslie Dane was alive, yet she who was his wife in the sight of Heaven dare not rejoice in the knowledge. His resurrection from his supposed death had fixed a blighting hand upo...

She no longer moped in her chamber, thinking and thinking on the one subject that began to obscure even the memory of her Uncle Francis. She had brooded over Leslie's strange si...

The dignified head of the Parisian school bows in assent, and stands awaiting her pupil's pleasure. The latter rises slowly, folds her music together, restores it to the proper...

Colonel Carlyle would fain have lingered in Bonnibel's apartment and asked for some explanation of her fainting spell, which he was convinced was the result of her meeting with...

She was beautiful "in gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls," but she looked like a statue carved in marble. No warmth or color tinged the strange pallor of her face and lips, no...

Full of vague alarm, blent with a little trembling hope of she knew not what, Bonnibel ran to the window, which was fortunately not fastened down, pushed up the sash and peered...

"What pictures?" mimicking the indifferent tone. "Oh! how indifferent we are! yet a year ago how blessed were the feet of the messenger who brought such tidings! Success falls u...

The scene is an artist's studio, up four flights of stairs, and very near the sky. A large skylight gives admission to the clear and radiant light, and the windows are open for...

Mrs. Arnold escaped all suspicion of complicity in her daughter's crimes, and was suffered to go free from the terrors of the law. But she had no object in life now. The destruc...

"_Une lettre_ from monsieur le colonel, for Madam Carlyle," she said, in her curious _melange_ of French and English. Bonnibel took the letter, and Dolores retreated to a little...

"Aye--aye, it will," said the old crone, wagging her head like a bird of evil omen; "it aye comes to faces as bonny as your own. But it's I that can tell you whether it be good...

Within the gloomy cell of a French prison Leslie Dane was seated on a low cot-bed, looking out through the narrow, grated window at the blue and sunny sky of France. The young a...

Francis Arnold was dead. The soul of the proud millionaire, the disappointed husband, the loving uncle, had been hurried prematurely before the bar of Eternal Justice. In the st...

"No, don't attempt to excuse yourself, mother! If you had taken my advice, and turned your wax doll out upon the world to look out for herself, this would never have happened! B...

"Words fail me, Colonel Carlyle, when I try to express my burning sense of your injustice in this high-handed outrage! What, in this enlightened age, in this nineteenth century,...

His rapid strokes of the oar soon brought them to their destination. Brandon was a poor little fishing village consisting only of the rude huts of the fishermen, a little Method...

"We are going to have a few friends to dine with us to-day--Colonel Carlyle is among them--and we thought--mother and I--that you might be well enough to come down into the draw...

Mrs. Arnold looked up from the sofa where she lay reading a novel by the gas-light with a start of surprise. Felise had come into the room as quietly as a spirit in her white dr...

It was Carl Muller who spoke. He had come into Mr. Dane's rooms the morning after the ball and found him sitting over a cup of coffee, looking haggard and weary in the clear lig...

It was scarcely noon before she heard that Colonel Carlyle had caused the arrest of Leslie Dane upon the charge of murdering Mr. Arnold, and that he had been committed to prison...

"I will tell you all I know," she says, with a pretty affectation of frankness. "That is not much. The Carlyles are going abroad next week and the colonel is going to put his wi...

through all her interview with Colonel Carlyle, but when it is ended she does not return to the ball-room. She leaves him with a cold good-night, and retires to her own room.

February winds blew coldly over the sea at Cape May, the day was bleak and sunless, a misty, drizzling rain fell slowly but continuously, chilling the very marrow of one's bones...

The chairs and sofas were upholstered in the same rich material; the carpet was white velvet, sprinkled over with blue forget-me-nots; the costly white lace curtains were draped...

Her suite of rooms, boudoir, dressing-room, and sleeping-apartment, all communicated with each other, but only one opened into the hall, or presented any mode of egress from her...

Mrs. Arnold and her daughter were rolling homeward in their luxurious carriage from the masquerade ball at Colonel Carlyle's chateau, and the elder lady's remark was uttered in...