An Unknown Lover

It was a week after the garden party. A persistent rain was drenching the trees in the garden, and turning the gravel path into miniature torrents. The atmosphere in the low, pa...

They were seated together at the breakfast-table, a handsome, bored-looking man of thirty-three, and a girl of twenty-six, whose dress of a rich blue made an admirable touch of...

When Grizel sailed down to dinner two hours later, it would have been difficult to recognise in her the pallid traveller of the afternoon. She was gorgeously attired in a robe o...

Katrine lay dazed and senseless, a huddled mass in a corner of the boat, mercifully oblivious of the perilous lowering down the great hull of the ship, of the gradual leaving be...

Despite her growing indifference towards neighbouring festivities, Katrine could not resist a thrill of excitement in preparing for the Barfield Garden Party, which was in truth...

The view on reaching the deck the next morning was strangely impressive to Katrine's unaccustomed eyes. The sun's rays flooded the great waste of sand, a limitless expanse cross...

Katrine's efforts to bring Bedford and Keith together seemed doomed to failure. She managed the introduction indeed, but the attempts at conversation which followed were not pro...

"We have had bright weather and dull, we have had smooth seas and rough, and now at last we have fog! It's experience," pronounced Katrine reflectively, "but," she shuddered, "i...

"Martin is engaged to Grizel Dundas. She is giving up thirty thousand a year to marry him, and he is going to let her do it. I sent Dorothea a cutting from the newspaper, which...

"Captain Blair presents his compliments to Miss Beverley, and takes the liberty of forwarding for her acceptance an antique brass box, which he trusts may be considered worthy o...

The next morning Katrine slept late. Physically she felt tired and spent; mentally, despite the shock of Vernon Keith's tragic end, she was conscious of a feeling of relief, as...

Katrine came slowly up the companion-way, and looked around the deck in search of her labelled chair. It was ten o'clock in the morning, and the sun was blazing out of a cloudle...

Grizel in a grey dress, with a hat wreathed with violets, was a shock to Katrine's sensibilities. In theory she disapproved of conventional mourning, and approved of fulfilling...

On returning to the ship Katrine found several letters waiting, one of which bore Jim Blair's well-known writing. She tore it open immediately on reaching her cabin, and was dis...

The fly stopped at the gate, the flyman alighted, and prompted by a sweet expectancy in Grizel's eye, rose to a height of gallantry hitherto unknown, and offered his arm to assi...

The next morning broke hot and still. The breeze had died down and its absence was shown in pallid faces, and limp, exhausted attitudes. A few daring spirits waxed apoplectic ov...

Alone in the quaint un-English bedroom Katrine bathed and made her toilette. Dorothea's loving hands had already opened the box which had come safely through so many perils, and...

During the second day at sea, chance arranged the introduction which Katrine had coveted with the consumptive artist, Vernon Keith. The breeze had freshened, and wrapped in a li...

"I'm in a grumbly mood this morning. Do you mind? Something annoyed me yesterday, and this is the lachrymose aftermath. I'm sorry, for your sake as well as my own, for it's mail...

Lady Griselda Dundas lay a-dying on her great oak bed. For two long weeks after Grizel's summons home she had lingered on, until now her aquiline features were attenuated to a k...

"What do you think I've been doing? I've been proposing to Martin," she announced placidly. "He's upstairs now, suffering from nervous shock, but he is going to take me! ... Kat...

"Considered as a box, it is a treasure indeed. It is so `worthy' of my collection, that every other specimen looks in comparison poor and tawdry. I have placed it on a little pi...

The delight and excitement which is felt by most travellers on a first introduction to the East was dimmed in Katrine's case by the pressure of events past and to come. The shad...

The ship dropped anchor in the harbour of Port Said early in the morning, and almost immediately afterwards four large coal barges, lashed together, were towed towards her, with...

"Very well. Very well indeed. I understand, and I agree. My birthday is next month, so it fits in all right. Rather a special birthday this time, for I shall be twenty-five. Las...

The new house had been found; a sunny, airy, sufficiently spacious house, and the bride-elect having graciously expressed her approval, an army of workmen were busy with the dec...

Katrine meantime had accomplished her duties, and given herself up to the enjoyment of reading, and replying, to her Indian letter. The temptation of beginning the reply could s...

"This follows quickly to retract everything that I said last week! If I had not already spent so much on cables, and if it were not so difficult to explain, I should have sent a...

"I _We_ done it! I've given in, and sent off the cable. By now you will have seen it, and be either chortling with triumph, or wishing remorsefully that you'd left well alone. I...

"Your grumbly letter safely to hand. You explained the reasons right enough, for all your protests, and honestly, dear, I can't sympathise! All is going as I could have told you...