Asphodel

It was a day on which common mortals were almost fainting with the heat, puffing and blowing and complaining—a blazing midsummer-day; and even here, in the forest of Fontaineble...

Daphne was as still as a statue, her vanity gratified by this homage to her charms. There had been nobody to admire her at Asnières but the old music-master, into whose hat she...

Another brilliant summer day, a cloudless blue sky, a world steeped in sunshine. On the broad gravelled space in front of the palace-railings the heat and glare would have been...

The world was nine months older since Daphne picnicked in the park at Fontainebleau, and the scenery of her life was changed to a fair English landscape in one of the fairest of...

Many a time since her home-coming had Daphne been on the point of telling her sister all about that more or less anonymous traveller, whom she called the man in the wood; but he...

Aunt Rhoda was not a person to be set at defiance, even by Daphne, who was by no means a tractable spirit. She had said, ‘Come to the Rectory,’ and had said it with such an air...

Daphne’s boat came home from the builder’s at the end of three weeks of longing and expectation, a light wherry-shaped boat, not the tub-like sea-going dingey, but a neat little...

Perfect mistress of her boat, Daphne revelled in the lonely delight of the river. She felt no grief at the loss of Mr. Turchill’s company. He had been very kind to her, he had b...

‘And so you are Daphne?’ said Mr. Goring, taking both her hands, and looking at her with an amused smile, not without tender admiration of the fair pale face and widely-opened b...

At ten o’clock Daphne was down at the boat-house again, ready for the aquatic excursion, looking as fresh and bright as if nothing had ever occurred to vex her. She wore a workm...

Sir Vernon Lawford was sitting alone in his study on the morning after the visit to Goring Abbey, when the door opened suddenly with a sharp jerk, and his younger daughter stood...

Mr. MacCloskie’s suggestions for new hot-houses at Goring Abbey were on so large a scale as to necessitate a good deal of consultation with architect and builder before the new...

The day after the family dinner was hopelessly wet; so the expedition to Shottery, proposed by Edgar Turchill and seconded by Daphne, was indefinitely postponed. The summer flee...

Past a garden or two and a few cottages; a long garden wail with heavy coping, shutting in treasures of fruit and vegetables; an old inn; a new school-house, built at the corner...

The two young men walked up and down under the walnut-trees for nearly an hour, Gerald Goring playing the unaccustomed part of consoler. He liked Edgar Turchill with an honest l...

Edgar Turchill did not go to the other end of the world to hide his grief and mortification at this second overthrow of his fondest hopes. He absented himself from South Hill fo...

For a man to waltz in the gloaming with a girl whom he passionately loves, and who has contemptuously rejected him, is a kind of pleasure too near the edge of pain to be altoget...

A man who lives within easy reach of two good packs of fox-hounds, and in a fair hunting country on the very edge of the shires, can hardly mope, albeit he may feel that, in a g...

All the servants at South Hill were old servants. Sir Vernon was a stern and an exacting master, but he only asked fair change for his shilling. He did not expect to reap where...

The second week of January was half over, and it was the night of the Hunt Ball. What girl of eighteen, were her breast ever so gnawed by secret cark and care, could refrain fro...

Edgar went back to the ball-room with his heart so penetrated with bliss, that the whole scene had an unreal look to him in its brightness and gaiety, as if in the next instant...

Edgar Turchill rode over to South Hill directly after breakfast next morning. It was a hunting-day, and the meet was at a favourite spot; but he had business to do which could b...

The next three days passed somewhat slowly at South Hill. Unselfish as Madoline was, even her delight in Daphne’s engagement could not altogether compensate for Gerald’s absence...

Nearly six months had gone since that wintry parting, when the lovers clasped hands and blessed each other under the sign of Aries; and now it was midsummer, and all the fields...

Twenty-four hours after that quiet row up the moonlit river, the South Hill party were on the Calais steamer, tossing and tumbling about in the Channel, much to the discomfiture...

Sir Vernon showed himself especially gracious to his younger daughter and her lover next morning at breakfast, when the itinerary of their holiday was discussed. So far as his o...

A chambermaid brought Daphne a letter at half-past six o’clock next morning. She had fallen asleep in the summer sunlight after a night of almost utter sleeplessness; the warm a...

Sir Vernon’s party had sailed over the smiling waters of Thun, with its villa-dotted shores, and its low amphitheatre of pastoral hills which form the foreground to the sublimer...

It was pleasant to drink tea at a little table in the garden of the inn, with the white mountain world spread before them in all its glory, flushed with the golden lights of aft...

They had been at Montreux more than a week, and it seemed to Daphne as if she had lived half her life on the shore of the beautiful lake, with the snowy summit of the Dent du Mi...

They had been three days at the homely, comfortable hotel at Les Avants, and Madoline was looking all the better for the fresh hillside air, an improvement upon which Mrs. Ferre...

When Daphne and Gerald were gone, and the fair woodland scene was empty, a third figure came slowly out of the fir-grove, a substantial form clad in a rusty black-silk gown, sho...

When the door closed on Madoline, Daphne rose and changed her crumpled muslin for a dressing-gown, and brushed the bright silky hair and rolled it up in a loose knot at the back...

‘You ask me for a detailed account of the melancholy accident on the Matterhorn, of which I had the misfortune to be an eye-witness, and the memory of which will haunt me for ye...